Wakers of the Wind
by kaynus
Summary: A new take on the "OC Zelda adventure" concept. After a night of drinking ends in chaos, Arran Faulkner, Jamie Pryor and 22 of their classmates find themselves thrust into a strange new world - a vast, sprawling ocean with no electricity in sight. After a grim encounter with a monstrous bird, they must embark on a journey that takes them across the Great Sea - and beneath it.
1. Chapter 0 - It's a Dull, Dull World

**Author's Note**

_So I'm back. There's been a lot of trouble over the past year or so – I ended up deleting everything I'd written – and I've had problems with creativity, motivation to write and the fact that real life sometimes has to take precedence over internet stuff, but I've finally gotten over it and I've been working on the plans for my new story. In a sentence: we're going to explore the implications of the tired old cliché of "group of spunky youngsters get zapped into Video Game World and have zany adventures with the cast". Not only is it a more realistically reasonable (sort of "middle fantasy" – has the overall plot and certain conventions of high fantasy, but in a realistic form) look at The Wind Waker, the Great Sea and its inhabitants and isles, but it also looks at how our group of confused teenagers who've never been away from electricity for more than a few days before manage to adapt to a pseudo-medieval oceanpunk pre-industrial civilisation. Since it's evolved from what was a fairly by-the-books fish-out-of-water romp with certain characters who compared everything to RPG clichés, there's still a lot of that; mainly, the central characters who carry out the majority of Link's in-game actions form a very archetypal JRPG party, with a couple of exceptions. _

_This is just a prologue of sorts, in case you can't tell. It's rated M, but it feels strange to do so as the only thing stopping me from rating it T is the language. That's an unavoidable part of English schoolkid culture, so coarse language is going to be everywhere. But the rest of it isn't really that dark, bar maybe some of the more violent acts towards the end. As painful as it is to admit at this point, I have sort of planned everything as if it were an episodic anime, so if any shades of that make it into the final product I'm sorry. I even went as far as taking ZREO, Dynasty Warriors 7 and even Monmusu Quest music to use to set the atmosphere as I was writing. As this is more of a precursor to the journey in the Great Sea which establishes the characters of the Earth children, don't expect much to happen in the way of story development here. That starts with the next chapter._

_As usual, this is written in a very dialogue-heavy fashion, as the story focuses on the characters' reactions, development and relationships as the events progress, as well as the plot itself. Keep in mind that the children are from 21st century south-east England, which means they'll be portrayed as accurately as humanly possible as I am also a 21st century south-eastern English teenager. One final thing to take note of is that Zelda and everything to do with it don't exist in this universe. Nintendo is known solely for its myriad of other franchises, possibly including another acclaimed adventure series that is pointedly NOT Zelda. _

_Enjoy._

* * *

**Wakers of the Wind**

**Chapter 0 – It's a Dull, Dull, Dull, Dull World**

"Nah, seagulls. I'm sure it was seagulls..."

The girl's lilting voice trailed off slightly. Her eyes – large and round, with a tone that could have easily been taken as blue or green – drifted skywards as she thought on. The uncomfortable warmth of the room in which she was sat had left her hair ever so slightly matted, with the subdued, sticky look of someone whose hair has been doused in both shampoo and sweat. It was either the combined body heat of the 70-ish students cramped together around little circular tables, or the fact that the massive windows let too much sun in and were never open, that made sitting in the Reynolds Secondary School's sixth form common room for extended periods of time the cruellest and most unusual punishment since capital punishment was outlawed. Standing – away from the tables, which generally meant in the way of everyone trying to walk through – was not much better, but that didn't stop the girl from doing it.

There was a short pause.

"You sure? Seagulls?" A short, bemused giggle escaped her shorter friend. "Seagulls don't sound very evil." The other girl looked behind herself, then parked herself on top of a table, resting her petite feet on a chair until she realized she was wearing a skirt.

"It was fucking terrifying at the time," the first girl asserted, idly brushing a stray lock of brown hair from over her shoulder. Eyebrows raised as they often did, and the tiniest smile formed as she remembered. "They were shitting all over the car. But like... the shits were acidic. Like, car-dissolving death-shits!"

The low murmur of the common room's chatter flared up as if in response to her interesting phrasing. Thankful for the shroud of noise, she continued. "And so we sort of piled out of the car because it had stopped and the roof had literally melted away, and we went for cover underneath this palm tree but they went through that as well!"

"Well..." her friend nodded slowly, as if hearing of caustic bird faeces was standard stuff. "In my dream, I was with Ellie and Louise, and there was this guy busking on my street and we just sort of... listened to him."

"That's a nice dream," said the first girl in the sort of condescending tone you can only get away with when the relationship between you is a specific level of rock solid. Patting her acquaintance on her platinum blonde head, her attention was abruptly taken by the presence of another. A male, no less.

Standing at 5 feet and 7 inches, Jamie Pryor was not the epitome of masculinity. What he lacked in muscle mass, he also lacked in skin tone; when the other boys had been playing football and enjoying the sun, he'd been at home, devouring so much detrimental food that it was a wonder he wasn't clinically obese. Instead, he clung to the edge of "Healthy Weight" on the BMI scale, a mystery attributed to his metabolism, if not simply his obsessive research into health studies and fitness. Known year-wide for his laziness, his penchant for competitive gaming and his never-ending fountain of sarcastic observation, he stood as expected with hands in pockets, sleeves up to his elbows and eyebrows raised in a manner that could have suggested confusion, surprise or any number of emotional responses he wasn't having.

"... You alright?"

"Um. Yeah." Jamie was not known for his affection for conversational small talk. "...Nice dream."

"Wasn't very nice at the time."

"I can imagine."

There was a silence. The second, shorter girl looked quizzically between the two, searching for a meaning in his arrival.

"...Did you get off with Rory last Friday?"

The question shattered the awkward barrier that had slowly been erecting itself between them. The taller girl let out a breezy laugh, shared a glance with her friend, then looked back to Jamie.

"Yeah, I did. Why do you ask?" The boy was aware there was no small amount of confusion in the way she answered.

"Just wondering." He did his best to look innocent, nodding casually and turning away. Spinning back to face her after a second's pause, he spoke again: "Apparently he growled?"

Another burst of feminine laughter. "Did he? I don't remember. Anyway, I didn't really get off with him... we just sort of kissed."

"Yeah, I sort of figured. Can't really imagine Rory being all... passionate."

Rory Sloan was known more for his record-setting academic achievements than his number of relationships. He'd had a history with the girl stemming from innocent 11-year-old conversations at the outset of their Year 7, that had grown into a playful friendship and later a relationship very carefully engineered by the girl to be just off the mark of proper romance. But alcohol is alcohol, and teenagers of all people are not known for their responsibility when under the influence. Rory had shrugged it off as such; a drunken decision that probably was best forgotten about. He fervently denied having gotten her friends to text her on his phone, asking if she'd go watch a movie with him at the cinema.

The silence returned.

"Alissa," said the shorter girl. She turned to face her friend. "Did we have any Psychology homework?"

"Mm-hmm," Alissa Hawking nodded. "Umm... I think it was just that little booklet thing on cognitive interview."

"Shit."

The girls turned. Alissa broke into a grin. "Have you not done it?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm known for my homework-completing talents, aren't I?" Jamie grumbled, and ran a hand through his short (yet somewhat quiffy) dirty blond hair. "How long did it take you?"

"About half an hour. To write. On Word. Then I spent about 20 minutes making it look pretty, then I printed it and folded the pages and stapled them all together..."

"So an hour. Fucking wonderful. How long have I got?"

Alissa's energetic smile persisted as she glanced down at her iPhone. "We've got Psychology next, and Break's gonna be over in what, 5 minutes?"

The boy closed his eyes, and sighed a heavy sigh. "Better get on that, then." Holding up a hand in a silent farewell, he performed another about-turn and strolled off, presumably to go complain about homework to his friends. Alissa watched him go, hiding her smile with her phone.

"I swear he never does homework," the shorter girl said, her feet dangling idly over the chair she was sat over. She inspected a shoelace on her right foot as Alissa took a seat on the table, next to her.

"Myra Teague, you can hardly talk!" the taller girl mock-admonished her friend, eliciting a scratchy laugh from the one known as Myra Teague.

"Hang on, I do all my homework! I swear I haven't missed any this year?"

Alissa was having none of it.

"Excuse me, I seem to recall you told Miss you'd left your book at home last History lesson? Coincidentally on the day our Renaissance essay was due in?"

"I did leave it at home! I was ill when it was set!"

"Oh, come on, do better than that," Alissa flashed Myra a devilish grin. "You sound like Luke!" Myra's eyes widened, then narrowed in mock rage.

"Oi, no! He's the worst! He's worse than Jamie Pryor! I dunno how he even got into sixth form!"

A ways away from the animated discourse, a crowd of boys of all shapes and sizes – short, tall, fat and thin all in as much harmony as you can expect a rabble of 16-and-17-year-old boys to be in – sat (or alternatively stood, like orbiting moons around a solar system of lazy teenagers) around their own table. Luke McKay had waltzed in without a care in the world a few seconds previous, holding his usual breaktime coffee like it was the Holy Grail. Running a hand through his auburn hair, he straightened out his suit jacket and sat in the vacant chair, between Jamie Pryor and the much taller Russell Patton. The boy held an air of respectability from his choice of dress and general tidiness, which he stretched vicariously in an attempt to make his chubby build, his embarrassingly archaic manner of speech and his hidden, shockingly perverted side all appear as desirable facets of an elegant man about town. Ethan Yates gave him the pet name "Mr. Sophisticated", heralding his entrance with such a call. Jamie preferred the term "pompous paedophile prick", but only when he wasn't around. Right now, Jamie was just smiling a sly smile, looking sideways at Luke as if he knew some terrible secret.

"What's up?" Luke asked, keeping as breezy and debonair a tone as he could manage. "Eh, Jay? Why the look?"

"You're being talked about," he replied in a singsong tone. Luke turned around. "Where? Who?"

Jamie tilted his head slightly in the direction of Alissa and Myra, who had since been joined by three other girls, and were as such sat at their table properly. "You think they want me?" Luke asked, raising an eyebrow as he made awkward eye contact with Louise Kennedy.

"I think they do," Jamie nodded. "You should probably go find out what they want."

After a pause, Luke nodded, and shifted his porky backside out of the chair. Russell, who stood at 6 feet 1 inch and was essentially Jamie's opposite with regards to physical stature, watched him get up and amble over to the girls.

"Where's he off to?" he murmured in confusion. Jamie chuckled softly. "They just said something about how he never does homework; I told him they were asking for him."

"Cruel," he said casually. "Oh, I bet he's loving that."

"'Come, fair lasses! Come, sweet dames!'" Jamie slipped into his exaggerated Luke imitation, waving his hands around like the boy often did. "'Lukey has enough dick for everyone! Anyone care for some good old Irish whiskey? Me old man's got truckloads of the stuff!'"

"Look at that class," said Joe Dixon, tallest of the group at 6 foot 3 and with the strength to match, watching as Luke delicately brushed his fringe out of his face. He slapped the table to emphasise his words.

"Look at that arse," replied Ethan Yates, who inversely was the shortest at 5 foot 5, and wasn't much less skinny than Jamie. "You could build a fucking house on that."

The group's dynamics were built on mocking every feature of every member; the more socially awkward, the more often they were brought up. Popular topics at the time included Ivor Ingram's religious beliefs, anything Rory said in his peculiar pseudo-Cockney accent, Russell's eating habits (a tendency not quite betrayed by his muscular build) and Jamie's purported secret relationship with Mae Starrett, a girl from the year above theirs who he'd spoken to precisely once. Outsiders who witnessed their interesting methods of communication (involving slapping each other; making terrible puns at every corner; bringing up embarrassing things they'd done in the past; emptying their bags when the individual wasn't present and a myriad of seemingly heartless actions) tended to not understand why they remained a group of friends despite the 6 years of endless piss-taking. Of course, considering that the group consisted of nearly half of the boys in their year since the end of Year 11, it would be rather awkward if they suddenly broke off into smaller groups; but even so, without the constant ribbing, their school lives would definitely be lacking.

"Alright?" came the casual baritone of a certain Rory Sloan, as he ambled towards Luke's empty chair.

"Half left," Joe idly replied, before tapping Ethan hard on the unsuspecting knuckles with his ruler. Rory sighed, and sank into his seat. "Anyone got a free next?"

"Me and Jamie have Psychology," said Russell. "Jay, did you do the homework?"

The look he received from the shorter boy told him all he needed to know. Russell laughed. "Good luck, bell's gonna go in like a—"

_DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING_

"Off you pop, then," Ethan smirked, nudging Russell's chair forwards as if to hasten his rising from it. He and Jamie (looking like a prisoner on death row) proceeded out of the door together, followed by a slow gaggle of tired teenagers reluctantly heading for whatever lesson they had next. Looking around, Ethan could see that Rory, Ivor, Charlie Garden, Ryan Bellamy and Hashim Samara were still present, along with a few others he didn't generally talk to. And of course, most of them were still standing around the table, despite most of their group having left.

"Everyone sit down," he said through gritted teeth. "What's everyone got?"

"I think it's just Psychology and Communications now?" Rory hazarded a guess. "I think so. All the maths people are here." He paused and looked around, one eyebrow threatening to raise as it so often did. "...Except Arran."

"Yeah, where is he?" Ethan asked. "He came in, didn't he?"

"Yeah, I walked in with him," Ryan Bellamy nodded. "Dunno where he's gone."

There was a silence.

"Turn that _shit_ off!" Ryan laughed, batting an earphone out of Charlie Garden's ear. With its displacement, the group could hear the sounds of some indie group blaring out of it. Charlie laughed in return, reaching for his earphone; as Ryan and Charlie play-fought over music tastes, Ethan and Joe shared a confused glance.

"He didn't have anything out of lessons today, did he?" Ethan asked, pulling his messenger bag up onto his lap to retrieve its contents.

"Nah. Dunno where he is," Joe trailed off, rolling his left sleeve up. Without warning, he brought his tree-trunk arm down on Ethan's bag, causing a resonating _SLAP_ that momentarily silenced the room. Flinching heavily, Ethan recovered and to Joe's amusement fought back by backhanding the taller boy in the solar plexus. As usual, the group devolved into chaotic fighting, and the thought of where Arran had gone was knocked out of their minds in lieu of the latest bad pun they'd conjured up.

* * *

Arran Faulkner had had quite a bad day. He was no stranger to them; the bruises and scrapes on his knuckles could testify to that, not to mention the hole he'd made in his bedroom door a week previous. In fact, he was pretty sure he'd broken a finger or two that night, but didn't let it affect his day-to-day activities – somehow not even kickboxing or rock-climbing. 'Work through the pain' was his unspoken motto, learned through long nights of frustration and the agony of having lost a parent just as secondary school had started. You had to work through the pain, really. If you didn't, how could you get anywhere at all?

That morning, Arran had endured an oversleeping brother, an agitated dog, a shortage of bread and the loss of his USB stick with all his History coursework in the space of around 30 minutes. When he didn't think the morning could get any worse without something short of global thermonuclear war, he had gone to his mother's bedroom to ask for his blue chinos and found her aching and bedridden from a sudden fever. Telling his brother to take the day off to care for their mother, he'd thus gone to school with more guilt on his mind than usual. Ryan wouldn't notice, of course he wouldn't – as loyal a friend he was, he had the emotional range of a dinner plate and it would have taken a full-on breakdown in the street for _him_ to realize there was something wrong.

That's why he'd made off to the library before registration; while a good number of their group were as emotionally in-touch as Ryan, there were a few who would see the freshly bruised knuckles, the particularly aloof mood and the rings under the eyes and draw up the connection. Russell would ask him straight away; he had no time for subtlety. Jamie would see immediately too, but wouldn't be so obvious about it. He never was. He'd wait until the two were away from the bulk of the group, then give his own, pre-emptive version of the morning's (or previous night's) events, and see how well they matched up with what really happened. And even Ethan would notice; blunt and seemingly simple as he was, he had a cunning side that really only came out when, again, he was with only the more "human" members of the group.

Honestly, he didn't want anyone to see.

It wasn't like he had much to worry about personally. Through his physical fitness, his carefully untamed hair, his academic prowess and his generally easygoing nature, Arran had very quickly made friends with everyone he didn't already know when year 7 had started. His relationship with a certain Lita Crawford tended to skirt the boundary of "good friend" and "boyfriend", depending on if Lita was in a relationship at the time. As expressive as Jamie with the social skills of Ryan, he tended to fill in the boxes of most girls for their ideal "sensitive guy friend", who coincidentally spent several hours a week fighting in dojos and otherwise exerting himself as much as humanly possible. But... sometimes he felt like the struggle was too much to fully explain to the others.

"Here he is."

Arran looked up from the PC monitor he'd been staring absently into. The words "The Renaissance was", having been hurriedly typed to convey an image of working, hung on the empty Word document he'd opened up a few hours ago. Jamie Pryor, clad in skinny jeans, hoodie and trainers, stood before him, looking for all the world like he'd just stepped out of a My Chemical Romance concert. Arran nudged the chair next to him with his foot, causing it to spin idly. Jamie took a seat next to him, and hastily logged onto his school network account.

"Interesting choice of trousers," Arran mumbled with a faint smile.

Jamie kicked his shin lightly. "Nothing wrong with skinny jeans."

"They're a bit... _red_," he replied.

"Oh, I suppose you'd rather I wore all black and looked like some fucking whiny screamo Bring Me The Horizon shit, yeah?"

"Are they still around?" Arran was suddenly confused, and somehow interested. Perhaps it was just the chance to get his mind off everything else. "I thought they broke up, like, a few years ago...?"

"Oh." Jamie stopped, spinning his chair from side to side. "Maybe they did, I dunno." He shrugged and pulled the lever to sink the chair's seat down. "Still shit."

Initially Arran thought the boy had come to find out why he'd disappeared, but as he brought up an empty Publisher document and slapped a rough paper booklet on the desk next to his keyboard, he wasn't sure.

"Have you got a free now?" he asked. Jamie turned, momentarily confused, then shook his head.

"Had Psychology homework. I was meant to have it in for this period but I didn't so she made me come down and redo it."

"Instead of the lesson?" Arran raised an eyebrow. Jamie absently nodded, typing out something about eye witness testimonies and weapon focus effects. "That's gonna help your grade."

"Speaking of that, why've you been down here all day?" the boy enquired, rummaging for a textbook in his own messenger bag. "Pretty sure you missed your Maths earlier." Here it was. The question he'd been dreading, and yet hopefully waiting for. Arran sighed, and massaged his temples.

"Had a shit day. Lost all my History work. And my mum's ill again, so I made Shaun stay at home to make sure she's alright, which is gonna fuck up his attendance. And the dog was being an arsehole. And we were out of bread."

He'd given his little recount a fairly lacklustre ending, and Jamie noticed.

"Out of bread?" Instead of the condescending smile Arran was expecting, he saw nothing but a casual nod. "So it's been a lot of small things rather than one big fucking catastrophe. That's... not much better, really." He found the textbook he was looking for, and laid it out on the desk. "You probably shouldn't have come in, if you're not gonna go to lessons."

Arran chuckled. "Yeah, I wasn't going to. But I realised I need to give Russell money for the vodka."

"Vodka?" Jamie turned again, pen hanging out of his mouth.

"For his party."

"Shit." Jamie had forgotten all about that. In one week's time, they were all heading for Russell's generously sized house to drink inordinate volumes of alcoholic beverages, order inordinately large pizzas, and have an inordinate amount of fun doing it. And for once, Jamie was actually invited. The past few parties the group had hosted had barred him, mainly for the amount of vodka he tends to drink but once because he didn't actually like the person hosting it (Charlie Garden was considered little more than a loud annoyance by the boy; his flapping hands, childish personality and hypocritical reactions to being taken the piss out of made for possibly the least likeable person in the year by Jamie's standards). This time, he was free to get as hammered as he wanted, provided he didn't throw up on the carpet. "Is he buying vodka for you?"

Arran nodded his confirmation. "Are you bringing your own?"

"Yeah, I've got a bottle of Smirnoff Vanilla. I-is... Luke... going?"

Arran sighed. "Yeah. You can't really... _not_ invite him, he pulls spirits out of nowhere."

"S'pose." Jamie liked Luke about as much as he liked Charlie, or being dropped headfirst into a wood chipper. "D'you want me to give Russ the money from you? Then you can just say you're ill or something and go home."

"I dunno... would Russell have a free next?"

A sly smile broke onto Jamie's face. "Nah, it's pretty expensive actually."

Arran hit him.

"Nah, nah, we've got English next." He paused. "So would _you_, if you turned up."

"'_Stuff that_'!" Arran cried, slipping into a Luke imitation. "I do _not_ have the patience for _her_ when I've had such a shit day." He pulled three £5 notes out of his coat pocket. "Give them to Russ when you next see him. I'm gonna go home."

* * *

_So, first chapter complete. At nearly 4,000 words it's longer than the stuff I used to write, and it's not even a proper chapter! Hopefully you get a feel for the characters and how they interact from this. Next chapter will include (possibly conclude with) the big "scary magic portal to another world" scene; this was more to set the scene and establish some of the main characters than anything else. Here's hoping I keep updating this past the first couple of chapters; I have great things in store for it, so I reckon it'll last longer than my previous attempts. I know the chapter had 0 Zelda-related content, but that's because as I said it's an introduction rather than the story proper. As long as everything goes well, the Great Sea will be introduced near the end of Chapter 1.  
_

_Also, what's up with this nocopy stuff? Just a jarring addition to the website that makes it a chore to come back to half-read chapters and remember where you left off. If someone wants to plagiarize fanfiction for whatever reason then they can just turn off CSS and copy it anyway._

_I'm not gonna make the mistake of giving an update schedule because I know I won't stick to it. But really, the chapters should roll off fairly easily considering how deeply I've planned this thing. Given how many things I've planned to be going on with the characters in different places, I wouldn't be surprised if the story ended up near 100 chapters. So keep an eye out._

_Criticism would be appreciated. I haven't written properly in a long time so there's probably a lot I've done wrong, or stuff I could have just worded better. Hit me with suggestions or whatever, I'll probably need them. _


	2. Chapter 1 - The Storm Before the Storm

**Author's Note**

_Following up the little intro pseudochapter with something that'll develop the plot a little more... or start it, even. I know I said I'd try to get the first two prologue chapters out of the way right after each other, but despite my best efforts school stuff still managed to get in the way and I didn't have a chance to sit down and write. Took this down from M to T because I don't think it's quite at that level yet (and not because I didn't want to be excluded from the default search filters). _

_I had originally titled this chapter "Calm Before the Storm", but then I realised how much sense it made. _

_English swear words are inherently funny to me. Americans must find them even better._

_Also, there are words in italics everywhere. I like to _emphasise_. _

_Finally, I appreciate it'll be hard to follow all 24 characters, even when they split up later on. To combat this, I'm going to add character info to my profile so you can remember who everyone is. In addition, I'm _praying_ that once they form their five groups as the story progresses, it'll be easier to keep tabs on each character because they're not always constantly in one massive cluster._

_Oh, and I just realised people could be led to assume the 24 OCs are self-inserts. They are _not_ this. 100% fictional. I'd put a cute little "I don't own Zelda" disclaimer here but I hardly expect Nintendo to phone me up with a C&D for my unknown fanfiction._

_Enjoy._

* * *

**Wakers of the Wind**

**Chapter 1 – Storm Before the Bigger Storm**

Days passed as they often did. Long hours of schoolwork (or not, in some cases) blurred together as an anxious waiting period of sorts for the weekend. They had had exams coming up – nothing important, just initial assessments to make sure they were suited for their AS Level subjects – but nevertheless, the freedom two days of no school offered made the approaching Saturday quite the reward to look forward to. And as usual, they scraped by – some by the skin of their teeth, having ensured they would stay in whatever courses had doubted their dedication through sudden diligence in homework output, or in Luke's case dispensing so much irrelevant Renaissance trivia that if he was dropped it would just make the teacher look bad.

Work or lazy relaxation was unfortunately the only option for the weekend, though. Bright-eyed plans for hours of football, expeditions to the town centre for cheap fast food and maybe a movie were all unceremoniously thrown in the proverbial bin by the sudden onslaught of rain. Not just any rain; these were the kind of fat, splotchy projectiles that riddled umbrellas with bullet holes of moisture, and infiltrated permeable scarves and clothes as if to purposely weigh their wearers down and make their day _that much worse_. Rain like this didn't fall, it _plummeted._ This, coupled with the uncomfortably common flashes of lightning that preceded the baritone rumbles of air-rending thunder from somewhere that could have been beyond the wispy summer clouds (but from the proximity of the lightning and thunder's occurrences, seemed to be _right above them_), had several effects. As Joe, Jamie and Ethan discovered to some ire on the walk home on Friday, one day before Russell's intended party, the rain and gale-force winds had played havoc with aircraft. "Who gives a shit?" Joe had elegantly enquired. Of course, with the safety of air travel becoming rather debatable for the next week or so, Mr and Mrs Patton had decided against their fortnight in Nevada, USA. And as they would instead not only stay within the dreary confines of the UK, but stay in the house... this meant no party. This was _not_ met with much celebration.

"Russell Patton, you _fucking_ arse-wipe," was how Jamie had put it, raising a hand to his forehead as if to shield his face from the all-engulfing downpour that slid down the road they walked on like some kind of fast, furious snake that smelled like sewage and caused careless drivers to shower them in a deluge of slightly-acidic water, mud and general spattery.

"Well I can't exactly help it," Russell had defended himself. "Wasn't exactly expecting them to suddenly _not go_."

"Can't they just eat out or something?" Ethan had suggested, daintily evading the minefield of puddles they had been forced to walk down following an overflowing drain on the road they usually took. Jamie and Joe broke out into terrible, terrible grins, as their inner 12-year-olds emerged for the briefest of moments. Ethan eyed them, and let out something between an exasperated laugh and a sigh of resignation: "Pathetic."

"In _this rain_?" Russell ran the last two words off his tongue slowly, as if to make sure the shorter boy realised what he'd said. "When they could sit inside and watch the football?"

"Does your mum watch it with your dad?" Joe asked, glancing at his iPhone for the time. Realising how quickly its screen was getting flooded by rainwater, he swiftly pocketed it... or tried to. "_Bollock_ it!"

Stopping to wait for Joe to pick up the smartphone and inspect it for damage, they turned and observed the tumultuous skies. Russell vaguely explained something about his mother having no time for football, but trailed off as their gazes were drawn to the colossal black clouds that had gathered above them. "Well. Fuck that."

Joe, satisfied that there was nothing more than a minor crack on the iPhone's back, slipped the device into his jacket pocket, and they set off again, now a little more wary of the weather.

#

Saturday was a lazy day. The rain didn't let up much overnight, but within the safe confines of their own homes none of the teenagers cared much. If they couldn't go out, they'd make the most of what they had to do at home. For some, this consisted of Skype calls and online gaming; for others, it was an excuse to study. Arran Faulkner found himself secretly pleased at the torrential precipitation, using his time to make sure the house was well-kept, the dog was bathed, and his mother (having overcome the worst of her fever) was in tip-top condition. After an afternoon of housewifeing, punctuated every second by the constant tap of the ugly raindrops on his windows, he retreated to his room at 4:30 pm to get some last-minute History revision done before their big test on Monday. Collapsing onto his bed, he pulled out his school bag from under it, and laid its contents out before him. Skimming his notes, he picked out one leaf of A4 in particular, and scrutinized every inch of it... or, tried to.

"The fuck is Lady Jane _Grey_?!"

Apart from one minor footnote scrawled at the bottom of this Tudor dynasty sheet, he'd written nothing of her, and could not for the life of him remember quite who she was, or what role she played in the turbulent drama that was the Tudor monarchy. His textbook was currently at Ryan's house being used for desperate note-taking. He had no choice but to consult either the internet, or preferably Rory Sloan, who would probably be more accurate. Nudging his laptop's side with his toe, he flipped open its lid with the same foot and watched it creak into life. Barely managing to run Windows 7 stably, the machine was a relic of the past decade; he wasn't personally complaining, really only using it for word processing and Skype (the presence of an iPad negated the need for a good computer for Internet browsing), but someone like Luke, Jamie or Ed Hopkins, who regularly played games on their titanic PCs and had proper graphics cards and everything, would have found it unbearable. Imagining the pained grimace on Jamie's face if he ever had to use the artefact, Arran smirked, and saw as Skype automatically started up after a few minutes of booting.

"No surprise there." There was already a conference call, with most of the group present. Ethan, Ryan, Joe and Charlie, all likely in the middle of a heated FIFA match. Russell, either on some game or just using the call as background noise while he did something else. Jamie, probably alternating between complaining about school and blaming the others on getting distracted and dying on some PC shooter. Rory, bouncing History facts off the others while revising. Even Ivor and Luke, both running for "least likeable classmate of the year", were present; this was what first clued Arran in that it wasn't a standard call. As he went to join the call and find out what the mass congregation was for, it abruptly ended.

"'What's going on?'" A good entrance line. Let them know you're there, make sure they don't neglect to let you know what _is_ going on. He tapped the Enter key, and waited for a reply.

After a good minute's silence, he received something he didn't expect. "'We're going woods, everyone's already left lol'".

An interesting development. "'Wtf why?'"

"'Rains let up'," Ryan told him through text chat. "'I'm about to leave, I'll meet you at your house and we can walk'".

Leaving Ryan with a standard "'Ye'", he sighed, shutting the laptop lid and rising back to his feet. Now not only did he have to find out who Jane Grey was, but he also had to get properly dressed and find sufficient alcohol to bring. He set off downstairs, pencil still in his hand.

The woods weren't a particular rarity. After all, you can't bar someone from coming to a public place. And yet, as long as you weren't directly on a trail, no one who didn't know about it would ever come across you. And if no one had a free house... there'll always be a free woodland somewhere.

Within half an hour, Arran had gotten fully ready; having showered in the morning already, he was ready to go as soon as Ryan came knocking at his front door. Brandishing a backpack stuffed with cans of Strongbow, he slung the rucksack over one shoulder and set off. Admittedly, the weather had cleared up rather nicely. The persistent rainfall that had plagued the town for upwards of a week had largely dissipated, leaving big, shapeless puddles, like countries on an atlas, for dog-walkers and woods-drinkers alike to have to avoid. Or walk through remorselessly, in Ryan's case.

Arran had rather liked the jeans he was wearing, before they had been decorated with several tonnes of leftover rain.

And as it turned out, they didn't even know _which woods_ they were going to be debauching in.

"Who decides then?" he asked. Ryan, an inch or two shorter than his friend with all the strength and bulk (if none of the muscular finesse), shrugged his stout shoulders as they walked, hands in his hoodie pockets. "I think Russ and Jamie said they'd find a good spot, then tell us." It made sense. The two lived the furthest away from everyone else by about 15-20 minutes, so they could meet first and set out from there to work out which area of great natural beauty they would be defacing today.

* * *

There was a squirrel, who had likely lived its entire life in this one sector of tree-strewn woodland. After all, squirrels are not known for their country-crossing tendencies (road-crossing tendencies notwithstanding). It had likely (not being one of the comparatively-endangered urban squirrels, who make a living wandering onto busy streets or motorways and mooching off of humans for food detrimental to their diets and thus do not commonly reach one year of age) spent a good few years in this secluded little glade; there's no doubt that this little squirrel was well-versed in foresting. It would – for example – be well aware of the helpful visual cues the forest tends to give you as to what it's going to be like in an hour or so: a constant flutter of golden leaves falling delicately to the ground means there's not going to be much floorspace soon. Branches swishing violently in the wind as if they're trying to whip each other means those leaves are soon going to be in your face with vigour (and possibly accompanied by insects). And cold droplets of morning-after rain still sliding off of those (thankfully currently motionless) branches means... exactly what you'd expect.

The squirrel knew this. It had spent the day scurrying purposefully around, doing its daily business with all manners of nut-gathering, berry-eating and other twitchy squirrel things. And now it was safe to retreat to its den – a hollow in a big enough tree, typically left by woodpeckers or other such tree-hammering creatures – and do the rodent equivalent of curling up with a book next to the fireplace.

The two humans who had just stepped casually into the same sector that this squirrel called home, did _not_ notice this.

"Well," came the recognizable, sarcastically-interested sound of a certain Jamie Pryor's voice. "It's flat."

"Mm-hm," replied the voice of Russell Patton – deep and smooth, like pureed honey. "This is good."

Jamie nodded. "Best we've found so far." His nose wrinkled as a raindrop landed on it, as if the forest itself were trying to warn them. He paid no heed, but sighed as he dried off his nose. "We should probably call _everyone else_." The last two words were laced with all the acerbic venom he usually used when talking about a few select members of their group.

Russell smiled. "Yeah. I'll call Ethan, hang on." Jamie took a seat on a fallen log, and yawned, putting his feet up on a nearby tree stump.

* * *

It had been somewhat of a nightmare letting all 21 of "everyone else" know exactly what part of "the woods" they were in. It had been stumbled upon after a good hour's wandering, down into their village and out the other end, through a few fields, down a few trails, and finally cutting a corner through an acre of farmland. Since their route required a little well-intentioned trespassing, not everyone had been happy with it, and so 6 of them who had tried to get there without the vaguely illegal parts ended up lost in the village and had to be redirected – this time with the added help of 13 others shouting nonsensical things about passing the weed at Russell's phone.

"I'm not calling my bloody _mum_," he'd snapped, shortly before getting Luke into a supposedly playful headlock.

30 minutes after, Rory Sloan, Ivor Ingram, Charlie Garden, Charlotte Price, Joshua Baines and Ellie Lowe had made their own entrance, "following the scent of booze" as Rory had put it in his usual Rory way.

Ivor, slightly chubby and still retaining his alcohol virginity, wasn't sure what to expect; he brought out the can of Foster's he'd brought along, and sat gingerly on a log next to Ryan, who immediately thumped Ivor as a friendly greeting.

"Alright?" Ivor asked after a pause. Ryan looked up from his phone and grinned.

"Half left," he replied. Ivor rolled his eyes with a small smile. "This is your first time drinking, isn't it?"

Ivor nodded slowly. Ryan nudged him with his elbow. "We're gonna get you laid tonight."

Turning an interesting shade of red, the boy laughed a nervous laugh and looked around them. With 23 attendees, the "party" was in full swing – as much as it could be, at least.

"So, are you impressed?" Ryan asked, flicking through Twitter on his phone.

"With what?" Ivor asked.

"The set-up. I'm surprised they found somewhere in the woods that isn't shit, to be honest."

"Well..." Ivor looked around, a faint grimace on his face. "Not what I'd call comfortable."

"Too many females?" Jamie suggested as he walked by, 12 shotglasses in his hands. Ivor hit him as he slunk away, laughing.

"Honestly, it's mainly the rain."

There was a lot of rain.

Thankfully, the canopy of trees above them shielded them from the worst of it, but it still fell from the leaves and branches like a someone had cracked a gigantic egg filled with water and cold air above the forest. It fell in their hair, it fell in their clothes, and it fell in their drinks, causing many a can to be abandoned due to the sudden presence of dirt, leaves or small insects in their beverages.

After an hour, the appeal of lagers and ciders wore off as everyone got more and more inebriated, and Ryan and a few others had decided it was time for some drinking games. Luke had supplied the spirits as he usually did – how he acquired them was a secret the group had avoided finding out about – and with shotglasses ready, they played the kind of games 16-year-olds do when drunk in the woods, in the pouring rain.

"Oi, why are we still here?" Hashim Samara asked. Broad of chest and thick of stubble, he wasn't the only Muslim in their group; rather, he was the only one not devout enough to abstain from drinking. To Hashim, religion tended to take a backseat to having fun. But even a radical free-thinking social butterfly such as he had limits. Limits that, for example, prevented him from enjoying sitting in the cold and wet woodlands of southern England when he could be in a house.

He received no response. Once drunk enough, anyone who questions the group's actions (or gives any sort of sensible advice whatsoever) is typically ignored. He sighed, and looked over at the remains of the drinking game.

What was originally an innocent little round or two of "never have I ever" had turned into "suspected alcoholism". Sat in an odd amassment of people who generally never spoke, the four who remained by the circle of shotglasses looked like they were having the most fun out of everyone. It often surprised people to discover how much Jamie had when the opportunity presented itself. He was currently laughing at Lita Crawford, who was recounting some undoubtedly hilarious anecdote about one of her past boyfriends. Arran was sat between them, cradling their bottle of Smirnoff protectively, giving the impression that his mature and responsible cohorts had attempted to take it for themselves previously. Luke was stood before the other three, brandishing a bottle of whiskey.

"Should I down this whole bottle?" he asked loudly. One by one, everyone's heads turned.

"You probably shouldn't," Rory replied, before turning back to Alissa Hawking. "Did I ever show you my bedroom walls?"

"Um..." the girl was taken aback a little. "...What?"

"My walls," he asserted. "They are blumming _marvellous_ly painted. Did it meself, of course. I went for a light sort of blue that goes great with my carp—"

The boy was interrupted by a sudden projection of vomit, burning through the sky like a half-digested acidic meteorite before landing on Alissa's chest. She shrieked, but sat back down as soon as she jumped up, laughing. "You keep on doing that every time we get drunk! What do I do now?"

Alissa patted Rory's shoulder, before getting up again to ask around for some sort of wiping agent. Hashim, smirking, looked back at the four with the vodka, to see what developments had been made.

Lita had gone to go talk to her female friends. Arran looked up, after a five-minute staring contest with the bottle he held. He opened his mouth.

"Oh my fuck," were his carefully chosen words, describing his feelings at the moment. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the approach of Ryan, who looked down at him with a pale face and the telltale smell of vomit on his breath. "Fucking hell, sit down," Arran said, shifting up the log to allow him a place. Ryan collapsed in the newly-vacated spot.

"I think I'm dead," he managed in a dry, croaking voice. Fishing around in his bag, Arran procured a bottle of water, and offered it to his friend. Ryan took it graciously and downed half of it in one go.

Jamie turned to see Ryan, and seemed to be thinking of an appropriate greeting.

"_Fag_got!" he shouted.

"Fuck off, Jay!" Ryan replied.

"Fuck _on_," Jamie interjected. Ryan kicked his shin.

To anyone who didn't know the pair of them, it would look like a horrendous case of aggressive bullying. But Arran's silence – more than that, his little smile and act of leaning back to let the two go at each other – would have told them exactly how it really was. Something like a friendship, built on violence and even more piss-taking than the rest of the group swore by. Ryan was a dick, he was selfish and he said things you wouldn't normally say to friends, but he was fierce and loyal as a German shepherd, and when push came to shove he'd only be slightly behind Russell in defending the others.

Once Arran had had enough and broke the pair up just so he could get up from his position between them without being accidentally slapped, Jamie turned his attention elsewhere. Through a vodka-fuelled haze, he stared at nothing for a few seconds, before seeing Russell.

"By the way," he started, raising a hand to his head as he had a very good attempt at standing up. "Why did we invite... _them_?" He waved his hand at Joshua Baines, Ivor Ingram, Luke McKay and Hashim Samara successively – the only four people in their merry throng he wouldn't have personally counted as 'friends'.

Russell laughed incredulously at the volume Jamie had voiced his distaste for the four of them at. "Hashim's a good..." his mouth flapped, as his vodka-addled brain struggled to find the right words. "He's a good guy, alright? Don't hate on hate—" another pause. He frowned. "...Hashim! Don't hate on Hashim!" Pause number three. "He's my _man_!"

Jamie laughed back at him. "You are so. So. So. Fucked."

Ethan Yates, still on his second can of cider, looked at the pair of them in disbelief. Never one to get absolutely wasted at any level, Ethan was purportedly one of the more sensible members of the group – though his sense of humour and attitude towards certain girls (more of an impatience to deal with them rather than the sort of fear or awkwardness Ivor or Joshua tended to display) brought that into question. "So are you," he nodded at Jamie, who was dribbling a little bit. "You're a fucking trainwreck."

Joe Dixon – all 6 feet 3 inches of him – unexpectedly slumped onto the soaking wet ground, likely covering his Armani jeans with no small amount of woodland debris. He held a hand up to his head, as if to check his temperature. "Fuckin' don't have too much," he said grouchily. "I'm not carrying you home again."

Jamie had had an interesting experience a while back, when they'd done a similar thing and gone drinking in a different "woods", with a lot fewer people, and in the middle of summer. They'd had to drag him through fields and quaint countryside roads since he'd had so much he'd lost the ability to walk, and kept throwing up over himself.

Jamie smiled in the nostalgia of it all. From what he could remember of it, that was a great evening, and he didn't even have a hangover the morning after. Mainly because he threw everything up on the way home.

"Pshh," he sounded, waving a hand. "You never carried me home last time, that was Arran you _arse_!" Unhindered by the usual barriers of 'what to say in social situations', he let his mind carry on the sentence by interjecting a random string of curses. "You're a cock! Yeah!" He stopped, looking pleased with himself. "Cock! Yeah!" He sat down inadvertently, and turned to throw up all over Alissa Hawking, who nearly screamed in anguish.

"Sorry Alice," Jamie said absently. "...Alissa, even."

"Do I _look_ like some sort of fucking vomit receptacle?!" she asked the sky. It replied with rainfall, right in her eyes. She sighed, and left to go find the other girls.

Joe rolled his eyes at Jamie's antics, and looked around to see if anyone else had had far too much. His eyes rested on Rory, who was lying on his back, orange hoodie cushioning his head from the twigs on the ground. He approached the boy.

"Rory, how much have you had?" Joe asked, a mischievous grin forming on his face. Rory groaned, then opened his eyes.

"Not much, I don't think," he replied. Joe was not convinced.

"Bull fucking _shit_, not much," the taller boy replied.

"Nah, I made sure I wouldn't. Gotta be up early tomorrow, ain't I?"

Losing track of the conversation, Joe instead went with the usual "make fun of Rory's dialect" spiel. "'_Go''a be up early tomorrow, ent oi?'_"

"Go away," Rory said, in something resembling good humour.

Ivor had been rather empowered by his consumption of various beverages. Where others had been defeated by the silky temptation of Vanilla Smirnoff, he'd been fine with his ciders and had thus stayed at the level of drunkenness where the fun outweighs the intense nauseous agony. With the grin usually sported by Ryan plastered on his face like vomit was on Jamie's, he leaned over.

"Oh, _okay_ then!" he cut in, implying disbelief in as subtle a way as he could manage (which wasn't a lot). Joe looked at him as he spoke; it was like listening to a monkey from the zoo speak English. He sounded like an old man with the way he pronounced everything; his high, nasal voice just made it stranger. Ivor continued as Joe shook his head and looked away. "You just don't want to get drunk because you're a—because you're scared!"

"Alright then, Ivor!" Rory had the strength in him to sit up and deliver a retort. "I've had so much I've been sick everywhere!"

Noting the way in which he completely contradicted what he'd been insisting to Joe seconds earlier, Jamie decided to butt in on Rory's behalf before Ivor noticed the fallacy and used it against Rory: "He's been sick on a _girl_ as well! And so have I! That's basically _physical contact_!"

Russell overheard, and interjected. "Yeah, that basically means you had sex, doesn't it?"

"Quiet, Russ. I'm being superior to someone," Jamie showed his palm to Russell's face. Russell slapped it away, and jabbed at Jamie's sides, causing him to jump reflexively. And throw up again.

There wasn't much sunlight anymore. Being so close to winter, the sky had darkened considerably at only 5:45pm, and it had gotten even colder. But yet there was something inexplicably alluring about it. There was no one, apart from them, for maybe a mile. And the rain had finally let up.

The girls had since formed their own little sub-group, away from the rowdiness and mess of the boys. Some of them were still drinking, when the others had long-since stopped.

Ellie Lowe had the figure and the looks that would have let her easily pull off the "icy bitch" lifestyle had she been so inclined. She hadn't been without a boyfriend for the past 4 years or so, and despite recent troubles with her latest – a boy one year older than them whose friendship with another girl was beginning to worry her – even if they did split up, she'd have a host of other boys to choose from. And yet she was possibly the nicest, friendliest girl in their year group. Where the other girls had had no time for anyone who wasn't one of those boys who immediately stood out as popular and attractive (and usually rather cocky) in their early years at Reynolds, she'd been talking to the less attractive, the less popular and the generally more likeable students, out of curiosity and a dislike for anyone being unhappy. It was through this routine that she got to know these boys – first Ryan, then Russell, then everyone else. Once puberty slowed down and the many groups in their year began to merge and dissolve, the other girls followed her example, and the clique known as 'the popular girls' started to befriend the 'not-unpopular-but-not-popular boys', until the concept of popularity became individual rather than societal. With a can of Becks in one hand and a book in the other, she was sat, engrossed in whatever novel she'd brought along, handbag to her side. Coming to the end of the chapter, she gently slid a scrap of paper to act as a bookmark in and closed the book, slipping it in her handbag and looking around, stretching.

"This is well nice," she said, a sincere smile on her face. Ellie was the sort of person who said things that other people would only say sarcastically. She was no stranger to mincing words and white lies, but sometimes her brutally blunt honesty was concealed with her saccharine tone and lively, conversational tone. Had a boy said what she had just said, Joe would have probably punched them in the solar plexus.

Alissa, a massive dark stain over her ample chest where she'd been subject to two separate vomit attacks, looked about ready to throw up herself. Grinning, she looked over at Ellie. "Is that sarcastic? You shouldn't... be." She was lost for a second. "—Sarcastic! ... Bad."

Next to Alissa, a boy sat, making purposeful eye contact with Myra Teague and rather conspicuously tensing his bare arms. Sam Durante was half-Spanish, and had used his fluency in the language to immediately win the hearts of some of the more romantic girls (and some of the boys). He was handsome, tanned, deep-voiced, superficially fit and had a habit of singing Enrique Iglesias songs in the common room at lunch. Jamie utterly despised him, but the rest of the boys found him agreeable enough, if "a bit of a poncy twat". He turned, seeing the girl sat next to him, and chuckled softly to get her attention.

"Alissa," he said, in his light Spanish accent. Jamie's head turned; he saw the boy, remembered he was there, and headbutted the ground in protest. The girl turned to face Sam, one eyebrow raised in query. He continued, sounding as if he was trying to find the right words. "How much have you had?"

Alissa waved a hand dismissively, beaming at the boy. "A little bit."

Opposite Alissa, Charlotte Price was chatting amicably to Lita, in her quiet voice. Reserved and timid as she was, she never bought into the lifestyle of house parties and constant boyfriends her friends did, instead preferring to make politely snide observations about everyone else. There was typically no malice involved; whatever she said, she didn't say it to insult or otherwise aggrieve the subject of her comments. For example, when she now said, "A little bit _too much_" with a cheesy grin adorning her face, Alissa did not proceed to beat Charlotte, or make fun of her comparative sobriety; she instead simply appreciated the swiftness of the delivery, and simplicity of the content. As they laughed, Myra looked over at Sam, who had resumed his staring. Smiling nervously – she had never been one to fall for cute foreign singers, no matter how many cheeky grins (or in the worst case, winks) were flashed at her – she silently excused herself, and wandered over to the boys to see how life on the other side was. She sat herself down with Hashim, Luke, Russell and Arran, who were in the midst of a heated discussion about when to go home.

"It's pitch black!" Hashim protested. "Nah, this is flippin' stupid. Why are we still here? Hasn't someone got a house?!"

"Oh, it's fine," Luke shook his head. "We ain't gonna get raped or nothing in here, are we?"

Russell looked up at the stars that were beginning to show themselves in the sky. The only light apart from that was from everyone's phones; the white glow emanated from every one of them, giving the area a surreal atmosphere and lighting them up just enough that they could discern everyone's face. It was nearly 6 o'clock. Night was definitely closing in on them.

"We should be alright if we go in an hour or something, surely," Myra entered the conversation unceremoniously. "We're not gonna get lost; it's just fields from here, isn't it?"

"Dunno," Arran laughed, "might get kidnapped by the farmer."

"Did you see him on the way here too?!" Myra asked. "I just about _shat_ myself! He just popped up from behind that tractor as we went past it, me and Louise—" Louise Kennedy, talking to Ryan, looked up at the mention of her name "—and started _screaming_ at us to get out of the farm! We had to run, I thought he was gonna get a _shotgun_ out!"

As an animated description of how Arran and Ryan had encountered the farmer played out (involving some mimed actions as well as enthusiastic wording), Charlie Garden had wandered over. In the wake of his parents' recent divorce, when drunk he got rather quiet and apprehensive, but losing none of the opinionated temper he'd always had, generally about trivial things. He sat on the floor in the middle of the little group, and waited for a lull in conversation before bringing up his own point.

"Seriously, though," he spoke, his voice deeper than you'd expect someone so childish to have, "why is Joshua here?"

He waved over at Joshua Baines, a lanky and pale individual – whiter even than Jamie, with a bony build and a permanent look of some mix of worry, misery and simple distance from everyone else. He was sat on a log on his own, can of Coke in his hand, looking at the ground, not saying a word. Charlie wasn't sure he'd said _anything_ since he arrived, and he'd walked here with him. Jamie looked over, and had awkward eye contact with Joshua, whose gaze drifted back towards the ground after a second's wait.

"You are talking really, really, _really_ loud," Jamie said conversationally. Charlie frowned, trying to think of a way to take that as an insult.

"I don't..." his brow un-furrowed. "Piss off. You _wanker_."

Jamie tittered at the response. "CG gets sassy when he's in_eeeeee_bri-matered!" He stopped, running the last word over his tongue again. "Jesus."

Russell poked him hard on the shoulder. "You can't talk. You're so FUCKED!"

Charlie had returned to observing Joshua. "Really though. _Really._" Ethan, finishing off his third can of Budweiser (likely his limit for the night), walked over, and rolled his eyes at the sight of Joshua.

"He was in the call when we organised it," he explained bitterly. "No idea why he came. _Look_ at him."

"Heeeeere's Jordan," Jamie said quietly. He laughed at his own joke, then his attention was taken by someone else standing up.

"I found it!" came the smooth tone of Ed Hopkins' voice. As casually amicable as Russell, nearly as fit as Arran and nearly as effortlessly good-looking as Sam, he had been becoming the target of a fair few girls' affections in the past year or so. He kept to himself usually, but had spent quite a lot of time playing games online with Luke, with whom he had a very odd friendship. Here he was, brandishing a bottle half-full of whiskey like it was the last on Earth. Jamie's look of vague interest turned into a triumphant joy, as he shouted out, "YES!"

Luke McKay scrambled to his feet, eyes widening as he realised whose whiskey Ed had found. "NO!" he cried, so simultaneously with Jamie's proclamation that there was almost comedic value in it. Ellie and Alissa certainly found it amusing, watching as Jamie and Luke raced each other to be the first to reach Ed. Despite his inebriation, Jamie got there first – maybe it was his weight compared to Luke's – and wasted no time in pouring out shots in glasses he'd conjured up from his pockets, in complete disregard to how much he'd had beforehand.

"Come on, lads," Luke said, fearful of spilling his precious whiskey but determined to rescue it from these two drunken hellions. "I think you've had a touch too much! Come on, let's just put it down and—"

Ed had a fairly late reaction. "Shit. He's coming!"

Jamie dropped his shotglass in shock, whirling around. "FUCK! HIDE!"

"NO TIME!" Ed went uncharacteristically loud; an effect of the whiskey, no doubt. "DOWN IT!"

The colour drained from Luke's face as Jamie haphazardly lifted the bottle up, and finished the last few mouthfuls off himself. Throwing the bottle away, he let out a triumphant battlecry, and fell over. Russell, observing all this, shook his head with mock shame, laughing: "Jay, you fucking idiot!"

Luke walked off in indignation, accidentally pushing past Caitlyn Greene, who looked over to see what all the commotion was. Not being particularly good friends with even the girls present (she'd come because Myra and Louise had been with her when they'd been texted about the evening's plans), she'd been sat with them regardless, quietly enjoying her drinks; she set her bottle of Becks down on the ground, and looked over in confusion. "...What happened?" she asked, a bemused smile creeping across her face.

Russell nudged Jamie's prone figure with his foot. "He's a fucking _lightweight_, is what happened!"

The shorter boy stirred. "You take that back," he groaned from the ground.

And then a twig snapped, and everyone went utterly silent.

For a group of wasted teenagers in the woods at nighttime, twigs snapping is generally going to be bad news. If it's police, you've just been found drinking in technically a public place, and underaged to boot. If it's any adults (or worse, children) you know, you've just made yourselves look like a bunch of lager louts with no respect for nature. If it's a random dog-walker who's just happened by, they'll either call the police if they're that anal about it, have an incredibly awkward moment of acknowledgement before moving on, or possibly kidnap some of you.

It was therefore to the group's great relief that the intruder's personage lit up when she went to lock her phone, revealing a familiar face – big green eyes adorned with heavy eyeliner, hair that had once been dyed blonde but was now ¾ its original brown colour, and the usual contemplative pout that embellished the face of Mae Starrett.

Cigarette in one hand and full bottle of vodka in the other, Mae was not a superb role model for the 16-and-17-year-olds that stood (or sat [or lay face down]) before her; she was about as dedicated to her studies as Jamie, and played some of the same games. It wasn't made any better by the fact that she was shorter than every one of them – and she was a year older besides. For all intents and purposes, she looked like a delinquent 13-year-old who wore leggings with pictures of cats on them, and probably got into fights or shot heroin or other delinquent things. But she was friendly, she was approachable, she was the _opposite_ of a slut, and she enjoyed time at home with her cats and her GTA as much as she did time in other people's homes drinking their alcohol and winding up out and about at 3am with vomit down her top and someone else's hat on her head.

Joe regarded her with no small amount of confusion.

"Uh," he managed, after a good 20 seconds' pause. Mae stood there.

"Yeah," she replied, carrying on the meaningful conversation.

"...Why are _you_ here?" Ethan broke the silence with a typically blunt enquiry.

"Rude," Alissa said offhandedly. Mae smiled; everyone was looking at her.

"Um," she said. "Well." She took a drag of her cigarette, and tapped its newly-produced ash to the ground. "I finished work early, right? And... you lot were all tweeting about getting pissed in the woods."

"I dunno if we tweeted about how to get here though," Russell said doubtfully. "I mean... that's not bad. You can stay here. But..."

"Yeah, you did," Mae confirmed, bringing up her phone and walking over to the boy. "Look. Here."

Russell observed the iPhone screen. Who else but Jamie Pryor had posted a good five tweets detailing the exact route he and Russell had taken to get here first. He nodded slowly. "Right then."

"Yeah," Mae said again.

"Why _are_ you here?" Rory asked in a slightly more friendly tone than Ethan had. Mae laughed, a little nervously. She bit her lip.

"Basically, my friends are all cunts, and I just wanted an excuse to get pissed."

Deciding to leave it at that, Russell nodded and gave her permission to get pissed with them, despite being nearly 2 hours late. The way she'd worded her reason for coming made him think maybe there'd been some kind of dispute with her friends; something he didn't want to tread on.

"That's okay?" she asked. Russell nodded again. "That's okay."

"Good," she smiled innocently, and walked over to the log where Joe and Russell were sat, and by extension where Jamie was laid on the ground still. Looking to the two active males for an answer, she then knelt down and pulled Jamie over, onto his back. The moment she touched his shoulder, he went progressively redder and redder. Their gazes met.

"You alright?" Mae asked conversationally. Jamie was silent for a good few seconds, then remembered the de facto response to such a question.

"Half left," he replied, leaving her positively bewildered. He noticed this, and somehow went even redder. "It's a joke! A pune, or play on words. You said all right and half left is the opposite of _both_ of those things so—"

"Shut up," Joe grumbled.

"Shut _down_." Jamie's grin was wider than his face. He sat up, and turned to face Mae on the log behind and slightly to the left of him. "I'm Jamie Pryor by the way."

"I figured," Mae nodded.

"Oh, piss off," said Ethan. "Bull_shit_ does he need an introduction."

"Never actually spoken," Jamie replied, wiping soil and twigs from his t-shirt. "Yeah, Ethan thinks we're basically secretly going out, so—"

He stopped, and thought about how he'd worded it. His face could have been an advertisement for Dulux's Sumptuous Plum. But Mae didn't react with the discomfort he thought she would; she simply laughed, and drew her legs in as Ethan went to light-heartedly smack Jamie's forehead for the sound it made. "Play nice, kids," she said, snubbing her cigarette out on the ground and unscrewing the lid of her bottle.

Kyra Wood watched her, thinly-veiled disgust etched on her face. Nearly as short as Mae, she sat primly and properly on a thoroughly debris-cleared tree stump, glass of Pimms in her manicured grasp, looking for all the world like she was anywhere but getting drunk in the woods. "Why is _she_ here?" she asked nobody in particular, making no attempt to mask her contempt for the girl. Jamie was drunk, but he wasn't deaf; looking over at Kyra, he laughed nervously, and elbowed Mae's knee lightly.

"What's her problem?" he asked, with little more tact than Kyra or Charlie. Mae shrugged. "She's that stuck-up little _slut_, isn't she?"

"Thinks the fuckin' _world_ revolves around her," Joe muttered, sheer revulsion in his voice.

"Didn't she tell the other girls they were sluts... because they _hadn't_ had sex? Something like that, I dunno," Russell added. As if on cue, Lita Crawford slid up the log.

"She did," the girl quietly confirmed. "I don't hate her, but that's a bit of a weird thing to say."

"What's that light thing?"

The voice was unexpected, and for a second it seemed that everyone else was at a loss as to whose it was. After a moment of shared glances (ranging from 'uncertain' to 'wild' depending on levels of inebriation), everyone's eyes settled on the darkest part of their little forest clearing – in more ways than one.

When Joshua Baines spoke, no one listened. It was a feature of his life that he'd since learned to tiredly accept; he still spoke out whenever he felt it was right to, but anyone paying heed to his words was just an added bonus. It wasn't just that his voice was so soft, so delicate, as if he were surrounded by sleeping lions; that alone made it harder to hear him in the first place, but worse was the simple fact that there was never anything interesting for him to report. When he did speak – in that low, gentle tone, that made you think of a child lost in a supermarket – it was always some unnecessary addition to whatever the topic of discussion had been at that point. Something about how what someone said a few days ago applies to what they were talking about now. Or an attempt to defend someone being mocked in a manner so passive, so meek, that it was just impossible to take it seriously. He definitely had some underlying problems, there was no doubt about that. What these problems were, the others did not want to deal with, or even know. It sounded cruel, but there was enough going on in their lives without the added baggage of whatever traumatic events Joshua had gone through on their backs. Arran was usually the one to humour him, to hold a conversation and walk around with him when he got stressed and started to cry, but even he found his unwavering, silent presence mildly irritating. It was like being constantly, mournfully observed by a sad little puppy who had endured a lifetime of neglect and abuse and just wanted to be loved.

"Speaking of weird things to say..." Rory murmured. "What's he sayin', then?"

But this time, they listened. Whatever it was in Joshua's voice that made him so tremendously easy to ignore was suddenly not present, replaced by the purest curiosity, tinged with fear.

It wasn't clear what he'd seen that was light. The area around him was getting darker and darker every few minutes. By now, the sun had fully descended across the verdant horizon, leaving them in the kind of overwhelming shade you get when under a network of leaves and branches at night. Apart from the (presumably illegal) fire that Ryan, Russell, Sam and Luke had started in the middle of their clearing, the only light was from the group's constantly active mobile phones; something Joshua either didn't have, or didn't want to brandish. This did not aid them in figuring out just what he'd seen.

"...What?" Russell voiced everyone's thoughts. For a few seconds, it was as if Joshua didn't hear him. Without turning around, he pointed a finger into the darkness.

"That... glowing... light..." he said, more vaguely than usual.

"...What?" Under fire from vodka, rum and possibly a Jagerbomb, Russell's synapses were not up to their firing standards.

Mae put her own phone away, and set about rolling up another cigarette. "Why is he here?" she mumbled, mainly to herself. Jamie looked up again. "How do you know him?"

Mae smirked. "We share a common room, mate." She dropped her scratchy voice down to a whisper. "_He is _shit_ scary_."

Jamie responded in kind. "_Serial killer in the making, isn't he_?" Deciding to reseat himself on as proper a seat as you can get in the woods, he raised his behind onto the log behind him, and continued in a louder voice: "Anyway, what glowing light are we talking about?"

He was expecting a simple explanation. 'It's someone's phone, you defective human being', for example. Or perhaps 'There is no light, maybe you're just tired', if proposed by a girl (or one of the more sympathetic boys).

He was most pointedly _not_ expecting Arran Faulkner to come out with a shocked confirmation.

"Fuck me, he's right."

"Eh?" Russell refused to be convinced. He walked (in an interesting zig-zag pattern) over in Arran's direction, seeing no light.

"I'm seeing no light," he said as he walked, reaffirming this fact.

"Come over here," Arran beckoned him; he was a ways away, a little beyond Joshua's perch on his own log. Taking care not to trip on any surprise plants, branches or trees, the taller boy made his way towards his friend. When he reached him, Arran took hold of his shoulders and swivelled him around until he was facing it.

"That," Arran said, swinging his phone up and down as a beacon for the others, "is our glowing light."

* * *

It was a truly bizarre phenomenon. Since when did holes just appear in the air?

"'s just a rip," said Annie Wakefield, as if it happened every day.

"A _car-sized _rip _in the space-time continuum_," Alissa reminded her. "Are you sure there's nothing behind it?"

Hashim came swerving around from behind their curious reality-fissure, nodding. "It's like it's not there on the other side. I put my arm in and it just _disappeared_."

For once, everyone was at a loss for words. Myra had been considering calling someone to let them know – possibly the police – but to her dismay, their location meant there was no signal for any of them, and leaving the site of a metaphysical miracle was completely out of the question.

"Why is it there?" Charlotte asked, waving a hand in front of it. The image behind it – a sheer blue wall – seemed to shimmer slightly as she did so.

"Does anyone want to say some var-in-ation of that again?" Jamie asked, standing up with the unwanted help of Luke. "I'll punch them. In the lip," he added as an afterthought.

"Oi, none of that," Ethan said half-jokingly. "This is bloody weird."

"Surely..." Ryan, devoid of his usual aggression, gingerly stretched his arm out. Tentatively, as if about to enter a freezing cold ocean, he placed his hand, then his whole arm, inside the rip.

"Christ's sake," Ethan snapped, marching up to remove his arm immediately. "We find a fucking wormhole and the first idea we have is to stick our _body parts_ in it? Do you _WANT_ to be an amputee?!"

"Chill," Ryan murmured, waving his arm about in the blue abyss.

"Blains," Jamie offered, after a moment's drunken thought. Joe hit him, shortly before Ryan.

"No, I meant... chill... y. Cold." Ryan nodded. "It's _bollocks_ freezing."

"Well, we _are_ stood in the middle of arse-knows-where at night after being _rained on_ for an hour, half of us _drunk off our tits_ and the other half _constantly complaining about them _like _little girls_!"

Ethan was evidently having a great time.

"No, my arm!" Ryan said. "It's like I just dipped my arm in a massive bottle of _frozen_ bloody milk that's been chilled in an _ice_berg in An_tarctica_!"

"Well get it out then!" Ethan snapped. Ryan's face turned to worry.

"I can't."

"What do you mean you— look, pull with your other hand!" Panic was beginning to show on both Ryan and Ethan's faces. It was easy to tell why; in his drunkenness Ryan had done something very foolish – he'd messed with what was essentially the fabric of reality – and now he might be paying the price.

As it turned out, he couldn't 'pull it out with his other hand'. A slightly-too-powerful attempt caused the hand to slip, and fall into the hole too. The cold was getting to his arms, and the usually criminally-laidback Ryan Bellamy was getting rather shiny-eyed and quietly hysterical. A state of frantic urgency took over the group.

"Someone call the fucking police!" Ethan was somehow taking charge, despite his stature. Russell shook his head. "Oh yeah, the _police_ are going to be a great help here! Look..." he was clearly at a loss just as much as the others were, but he wasn't about to let it stop them from considering their options. "...this is proper, serious, space-time stuff. Police wouldn't do fuck all but interfere... I think the less people know about something like this the better."

"I think I know a technique," Luke said, slipping his jacket off and draping it casually around Louise Kennedy's shivering shoulders. The others turned to him. "A technique that pulls people out of cross-dimensional portals?" Jamie asked, then received looks of his own. "Well that's obviously what's happened! Where else is a hole in _existence_ going to go? Majorca?"

"Majorca's still nice this time of year," Joe let everyone know. He looked over at Luke. "Luke, no. _NO._ Not that."

Luke had rolled his shirt sleeves up. Cracking his knuckles, he told Ryan to prepare himself, because his arms were probably going to be aching once he was done. The others had no time to cringe at how dodgy the statement sounded, as they watched him fail to plant his feet properly in the ground, and trip over Ryan's dropped bag. He fell forwards, colliding with the stuck boy. There was a moment where it seemed that, likely due to the simultaneous adrenaline surge felt by every one of them at once, time seemed to slow down. They saw as Luke, frustrated at his ineptitude, careened forwards, taking Ryan, plainly terrified at what was going on, straight into the hole with him.

There was silence. Their shouts were abruptly ended, just like that, when they went in. And yet the hole remained, standing there in all its cryptic glory, almost taunting them to go in.

"What do we do now?" came the shaky voice of Myra Teague, who'd dropped her phone in the shock of Ryan and Luke's sudden exit from this plane of existence.

"We should follow them," Jamie said in a strangled voice. "We have to."

The sombreness of the situation was frightening. Even Kyra Wood, who thought Luke was a perverted creep who deserved a beating or two for what he'd said to her, was visibly affected. After all, no matter what they thought about Luke, Ryan was basically everyone's friend. And suddenly, he was gone. They both were.

"No, we shouldn't," said Joe, as if explaining it to a 5 year old. "That's the worst possible idea you could—"

"All in favour say aye," Jamie interrupted him. "Or... raise your hands or something."

Slowly, one by one, a smattering of hands raised themselves. Alissa, looking unsure and itching to do something about it. Russell, fists clenched in frustration. Ellie, combined hurt and determination betrayed on her normally-happy face. Ed, letting nothing slip, but obviously distressed to some extent. And Arran, veins already starting to show in his arms. His best friend was now one dimension away, and he wasn't about to let that slide.

"Great," said Joe, "six of you. Now let's call the police, and—"

"Well, you can call the police if you want," the shorter boy interrupted him again. "I'm following them."

"Jay, hang on—"

Lita's interjection fell short; no sooner had she stepped forward to try to calm him down than the boy had launched himself off. Coat in hand, he sprinted the short distance into the hole, barrelling headfirst into it. And with a soundless transition, he was gone, just like the other two.

Russell didn't need much more of a reason to start running than that. Closely followed by Arran, he was off himself, almost shoulder-barging the hole as he leapt through it. Again, like the last three entrants, his impact made the blue screen behind the tear ripple out, but there was nothing tangible; no _sound_, no resonant _feeling_ of contact. They were all simply there one second and gone the next. Like they were never there. His position as he entered – left foot stuck out as he launched from it – was a slight problem for Arran, whose leg collided with Russell's and caused him to fall headfirst in.

The remaining 20 shocked teenagers looked bashfully amongst each other. With Russell and Jamie gone, they truthfully felt a little out of their depth. Russell was the level-headed, responsible one; and Jamie was his crazy conspiratorial foil who tried anything Russell said he shouldn't... unless it involved saving their friends.

"Well. Stuff this."

Rory Sloan walked forwards, rather more composed than the others. He stopped before the tear to pull his orange hoodie over his head. Adjusting the spikes of his hair as if in front of a mirror rather than a transcendental window into another universe, he rolled his shoulders back, then turned.

"We should really be getting on going in here."

"Christ the Re_deemer_..." Ethan was about to burst a blood vessel. "_No_, Rory, we shouldn't. Thanks to their _stupidity_, they've gone and rushed off to follow Luke and Ryan – to _absolutely fucking nowhere_, I remind you – and now we can't reach them."

"Maybe that's it. Maybe we can reach them." Rory was starting to wax philosophical, and Alissa was impressed. She eyed the cans and bottles strewn around their woodland playground; something about the recent happenings had seemingly completely washed away the goofiness, clumsiness and bad judgement of drunkenness. Well, maybe not the bad judgement. Maybe it was the drinking that caused it.

"Imagine that," she muttered to herself, as Rory continued on his powerful speech. "Headlines tomorrow: '24 CHILDREN MISSING AFTER HOLE IN REALITY OPENS UP IN WOODS SOMEWHERE'. 'Experts say alcohol was catalyst for drunkards' foolish decision to jump into wormhole one after another'. Beautiful."

"...the _only way_ we can reach them is to follow them," Rory finished. Joe raised an eyebrow. "Have you been writing that down for the past 5 minutes?"

"Look..." Rory sighed. He was desperate to get the others to follow suit, but didn't want to go charging off into the hole without being sure everyone would follow him in. He glanced around; despite the unexpected happenings, everyone's phone was still gripped in their hands, the last mundane thing tying them to this world, when the allure of the other one lay just within that hole...

He moved faster than even he thought he could. Jerking Joe's meaty wrist, he grabbed the falling iPhone before it hit the ground. He did the same to Charlie and Kyra before losing steam and stopping. Joe went to get his back immediately, but Rory turned back to the hole.

"You want your phones back..." he did Kyra the favour of locking hers. "...you're gonna have to go get 'em."

He tossed the devices in the hole, and Kyra shrieked out. "Why the _fuck_ did you do that, you _arse_hole!?"

"Come on!" Rory was beyond frustrated at this point. "Our friends are lost in blummin' God-knows-where, and you're worried about your blummin' iPhone?! Follow me in there, for crying out loud!"

"Laughing in quiet," Ethan responded, receiving a stronger-than-usual hit from Joe for it. Recovering from the winding blow, he sighed. And stepped forward. "We might as well. Nothing else we're gonna be able to do. Honestly, we call the police and they come see our little space-hole, they're not gonna get out a bloody cross-dimensional crane, are they?"

"Exactly," Rory raised a hand in gratitude. "Imagine the fuss we'd have to go through if authorities found out about all this. We'd be stuck giving reports for _weeks_. And imagine facing their parents when we tell them we just let them _fall into another universe_. Not worth it at all."

"So you want to chase that lot through... wherever the cunting wank this piece of shit goes?" Joe had not been left in the greatest of moods since his iPhone was removed from existence.

"Exactly," Rory said again. "Exactly. Anyone definitely, like, for sure, following me?"

"I am," Alissa said in a little singsong tone. She stepped forward; as if on cue, so did Ethan, Ellie, Ed and Louise. There was a short silence, then the others seemed to be surprised that four of them had volunteered at all. Slowly, trickling in like water through cracks in a rock, everyone was before him, ready to do something crazy. Something completely insane, that was likely going to change their lives. And, as they would later find out, it was not necessarily for the better. Not even _remotely_ for the better. In fact, it was not going to get any worse until the day they returned, one man short, scarred and bruised, with more worldly knowledge than any 16-year-olds would need, and the responsibility of an entire world upon their weary shoulders.

* * *

_The plot thickens. :o  
_

_For some reason I thought this would be easy. Two chapters in, I've remembered that to write a good story you have to be a good storyteller, regardless of how well thought out the plot is. Gonna take this a little more slowly and not rush myself so I don't half-arse the narrative aspects of the story._

_This chapter ended up about 10,000 words long. That's scary-long for me, and my plans for it were honestly pretty tame compared to how much I've worked out for the following chapters. It's going to be even longer than I thought. But maybe that's just all the character introductions I had to do. I dunno. We'll find out when I finish Chapter 2, when we get to find out what radical and totally unexpected thing happens to our intrepid party of adventurers next time on Dragon Ball Z! _

_Let me know if I'm doing anything wrong, or if I'm just not writing clear enough, or whatever. I think I've got the hang of it back, but it _is_ 1am at the time of writing and I might have started to waffle near the end._


	3. Chapter 2 - Cross-Dimensional Holiday

**Author's Note**

_GOOGLE DOC CHANGELIST:_

_Updated everyone's location in the Character Sheet_

_Updated everyone's occupation in the Character Sheet_

_Added Aryll, Oomu, Stillon and Alaina to the Character Sheet_

_Finally at the part where it hopefully gets interesting. Now that we're in the Great Sea, I'm going to start prefacing point-of-view changes with the location and time/date, to help make it easier to follow. Also, as more of a one-time reference guide than anything else, have some calendar details. The full thing's in a Google Doc I've linked to on my profile, along with a character spreadsheet you might want to take a look at. I'll update the character sheet with characters, and details about everyone, as they come up in the story._

_I'm using an Elder Scrolls-esque year system, where you put the 'era' first, then how many years into that era it is. It's been 200 years since life on the Sea began, so it's 10E (10__th__ era: Era of the Great Sea) 201._

_Great Sea days of the week (Anorsday, Ithilsday and Menelsday all come from the Sindarin words for Sun, Moon and Heavens; the others are just celebrating Caladgardh's deities)_

_Sunday – Anorsday (Sun's Day) _

_Monday – Ithilsday (Moon's Day)_

_Tuesday – Dinsday (Din's Day)_

_Wednesday – Hiliasday (Hylia's Day)_

_Thursday – Farsday (Farore's Day)_

_Friday – Naesday (Nayru's Day)_

_Saturday – Menelsday (Heavens' Day)_

_Great Sea months of the year (taken straight from Tolkein; I couldn't find any etymology for Gwirith, Cerveth, Ivanneth or Girithron):_

_January – Narwain (New Sun)_

_February – Nínui (Watery)_

_March – Gwaeron (Windy)_

_April – Gwirith_

_May – Lothron (Flowery)_

_June – Nórui (Sunny)_

_July – Cerveth_

_August – Urui (Hot)_

_September – Ivanneth_

_October – Narbeleth (Sun's Waning)_

_November – Hithui (Foggy)_

_December - Girithron_

_So our heroes' first day in the Great Sea is Anorsday, 16__th__ of Nórui; Sunday, 16__th__ of June, in other words. I was kind of iffy about using different names for calendar things, but it helps flesh out Caladgardh in my opinion._

_Enjoy._

* * *

**Wakers of the Wind**

**Chapter 2 – Cross-Dimensional Resort Package...**

The last thing Ellie Lowe could remember was watching all of her friends, one by one, throw themselves into that great scientific impossibility they'd found – after Ryan, Luke who'd pushed him in, Jamie in an act of foolishness, Russell and Arran in pursuit of Jamie, and Rory who'd ended up convincing them all to step in through the gateway. And so they had.

That was it. All she could remember from that hectic 10 minutes. All the panicking, all the worries about what letting authorities know would do... then there was an odd air of resolution after Rory had beckoned them forwards. Without a word, everyone – even Kyra Wood, who until that minute had been spouting the usual nonsense about how weird the boys apparently were for just waltzing into the hole in existence – had stepped towards it. Then, one after another, they climbed in, with a little more grace than the others who had thrown themselves at it like it was running away from them. And then, nothing.

As she'd gone through – she was the third last to, before Kyra and Sam – a great deal of different thoughts had run through her head, all at the same time, fighting for precedence. There was the rational part of her, which had been urging her to turn away – but it was too late now, everyone was already gone, and if she'd stayed it would just be the three of them, and after all how would that have gone down with all their parents? Then there was the curiosity – just what _was_ on the other side? What would it be like to go through? That blue sheen, was that a physical entity? An atmosphere, or just the _material thing_ that voids are made from? Where was everyone else? Had they been dissolved by the blue? Gone somewhere else entirely? Or did they go _nowhere at all_? Maybe the gateway just... heightened their state of matter? Made them so intrinsically incorporeal, through fission or solution or whatever vaguely scientific word was easiest to think of at the time, that their molecules had spread out into the ether?

And that led to the paranoia; the sudden, gut-wrenching second-thoughts, the "what have we done"s and "how could this happen"s, that made everyone's final seconds in those dusky woods a rollercoaster of barely-concealed internal panic – and had nearly made Ellie back out. But of course, she wouldn't have; not with all of her friends already having gone through. And she couldn't have either, thinking about it; by the time her body had prepared to make a conscious reaction to her brain's stupidity, her foot and arm were well into the ethereal blue pool of nothing, and as Ryan had taught them, she was for all intents and purposes _already inside_ by that point.

And so she went through, like all the others.

And now she was here.

It took some effort to open her eyes. Crusted over with thick layers of what felt like a mixture of sand and rheum, it took a few seconds of passionate eyelid-straining to realise she would require the assistance of her hands. Slowly, they fell onto her face; she was evidently not quite in control of her body yet. Fumbling over her damp face, she felt its texture, noticing the streaks of grime without having to look. Her fingertips felt strange brushing against her cheeks; they felt rough, and somewhat... pruned. Something was up, but Ellie's still-asleep brain was not about to let her work out what.

Wiping the obstructive material away, she opened an eye, then immediately closed it again. A strong, white sun was glaring down at her, with no clouds to block its onslaught of summery light. Suddenly, she was painfully aware of this, all over her body. She raised a hand to her head again, in a groggy attempt to simultaneously shield her newly-cleared eyes from the rays that beat down on her aching body, and push some matted clumps of platinum blonde hair out of her face, to feel more 'awake'. The action made her notice something else: there was sand, all over her arms and hands, and now all over her eyes and forehead where she'd touched them.

Finally, her synapses re-engaged. Realization dawned, and she made a valiant effort to raise her head from its resting place to confirm her sudden suspicion. One eye barely squinted open, looking down at her conspicuously bare feet. And... she was right. Definitely sand. Definitely a beach.

Her head fell back into the cushion of sand where it had obviously been for a while (going by the sizeable crater it had formed), and she thought it through again. Sand. She was on a beach. And... she could even hear it now. Waves, lapping on the shore, a little further ahead of her. And... there was a seagull.

And the _smell._ It was like Febreze had put out a special "seaside-flavour" fragrance – all the tangy goodness of a beach, with none of the uncomfortable industrial fumes that tended to mix in with it in England. It was the smell of the sea, without the smell of a city a little behind it. It was fresh, it was rather empowering, and it was _natural_. As more and more of her brain cells kicked into action, she started to piece together the obvious conclusion.

So she wasn't in England. You'd be hard pressed to find anywhere smelling this wholesomely natural outside of carefully-preserved national parks – not to mention the scorching sun above her, that made a slight change from the autumnal showers they'd been suffering during their ill-fated alcoholic excursion. For some reason, in her bleary state of mind, she found this all fairly easy to take in. It seemed _logical_. The question wasn't where she was, so much as _why she was there_. And...

"Where is...?"

Her voice, a faint croak of fatigued disuse, trailed off, and she opened her eyes again. Determined not to let the sun close them again, she stared pointedly at the sand again to let them adjust. And then she saw a shoe.

It wasn't her shoe. She was rather interested in where her trainers _had_ gotten off to, seeing as they definitely weren't on her sandy feet where they belonged, but this shoe was a good deal smaller than her average-sized feet. It reminded her of...

"Annie...?"

Ellie tried to succinctly reach over for the lone trainer, but had forgotten just how used to movement she was, and fell face-down into... not the sand, but another person. Hastily lifting herself, she looked down at her new companion's slumbering figure, and for a moment she was lost. Then she saw the dark green coat strewn over the girl's body, and immediately she laughed, more in relief than anything else.

"L—" Ellie cleared her throat, and restored it to working order. "Lita..."

Softly, as if waking a baby, she shook Lita Crawford by the shoulder – not just once, or a few times, but over and over again until she elicited some form of a response. After a good 12 seconds' diligent shoulder harassing, Lita finally stirred. She opened her eyes with a little less difficulty than Ellie had had, but received the same treatment from the sun as the blonde girl did; rather than a simple closing of the eyes, Lita instead rolled over, onto her face.

Ellie giggled.

Lita made a noise somewhat resembling an adopted orang-utan who just met its real orang-utan parents, turned over, and laughed back, in a kind of exasperated triumph.

"Hello," she said, before spitting out sand on her coat. "Hello..."

Ellie grinned back, and they sat there in a daze for what felt like minutes, before one of them thought to speak, and perhaps discern just what happened to them all.

"So..." Lita began, coat draped over her shoulders like a poncho. "What the _fuck_ happened here?"

"No clue," Ellie shook her head. "I just woke up – with sand and stuff all over me – and saw you. You look awful, by the way," she added, with all the friendly tact in the world. Lita raised an eyebrow in query.

"Your eyeliner's run," the blonde girl explained. Lita fingered her eyelashes gingerly, then realised there was sand in her hands and frantically tried to brush it out. "Hang on..."

Ellie's handbag was between the two of them; it looked positively battered, but the catch was still intact. Fiddling with the mechanism, she tore the flap off and rummaged inside, retrieving her phone, which was remarkably spotless compared to the rest of her bag. She handed the device to Lita, who used its reflective screen to check up on her face.

"Christ, you're right," she lamented, seeing the smudge of mascara that snaked around her eyes and blurred into her cheeks. "I look like a panda." She put the phone down on the sand, and glanced over at Ellie. "So's yours."

Ellie snatched for her phone, and tentatively raised it to her face. She looked at her reflection, with a little less misery than Lita, and shrugged. "Not much. What do you think caused it?"

"Well," Lita said, drawing her knee up to her chin, "we were probably in that sea."

There was an ocean a few yards down the beach. Blue as the Mediterranean, its waves were calm and tranquil, lapping lazily onto the shore again and again like a tired cat drinking water. There was nothing in the sea, beyond a few un-noteworthy stacks and stumps near the shoreline.

"Which sea would that be, then?" Ellie replied, looking around. "And how the _fuck_ did we get here?"

"Well, obviously the hole," Lita reminded her blonde friend, teasing a matted lock of brown hair apart.

It all came back. She'd been thinking about it when she first awoke, but as soon as the more pressing matter of her location presented itself she'd completely forgotten. And now she remembered it all again. The confusion. The unease. The last-second terror, the "what if they're gone?"s, the "this wasn't a great idea"s, and then the _nothing._ The complete, abject _nothing_. From when she stepped into that metaphysical mistake, to when she first tried to open her eyes on this alien coast, there was nothing that happened, nothing that she sensed. It was like an anaesthetic slumber during a surgery, but instantly-effective, and without her consent.

From the look on her face, Lita was remembering the exact same thing.

Desperate for a new distraction, Ellie whipped her head around, to find some other meaningless thing she could comment on. And then she saw everyone else.

They were sprawled out in the one direction she hadn't looked, all over a wide section of beach to the girls' right. And after a swift headcount by the pair of them, they determined that it was, in fact, everyone else. All 22, gathered on the beach, just like them.

"This is getting weirder and weirder," Ellie mumbled. "Should we go wake them all up?"

As it turned out, there would be no need.

"_HOOOOOOOOY_!"

* * *

Lendheria

13:09

Day 1: Anorsday, 16th of Nórui (10E 201)

They were in Lendheria ('Outset Island to most'), they were a long way away from England, and they were lucky to be alive.

As Aryll Thallon (the cheery little girl who'd woken every still-sleeping teenager with her largely unnecessary call of 'HOOOOY') explained, they had been found drifting in the sea – a little to the south of the island – by an old man who had a big spear, a bigger beard and an aversion to wearing shirts. He called himself Orca, but (as Aryll slyly told them once he'd gone after a gruff acknowledgement of their gratitude) his real name was Oomu Faín – Orca was a title he'd adopted in his 20s, after a locally-famous scuffle with a killer whale which he'd come out of five whale teeth happier (Ethan was sure whales didn't have teeth, but he shut up when Oomu showed him one of the fist-sized trophies). His original proposition – "_i Dagnir-en-Limlug Dagnir_", or "the Killer Whale Killer" in 'the old tongue' – was deemed by his sweetheart at the time to be a little violent for all the kids that looked up to him as a mentor and role model.

"According to Grandma," Aryll recounted, mischief in her big hazel eyes, "He got pretty mad about that! He started shouting about how '_no one ever fought anything in Lendheria but him and his brother anyway, so who cared if the kids heard 'The Killer Whale Killer' in a language they didn't even understand_?'" She'd clearly heard this story several times.

Orca's brother, as they found out on the way to Aryll's house to fully recuperate, was even older, with a shorter beard, a walking stick instead of a spear, and a thick pair of eyeglasses that seemed to obscure his eyes. Apparently, his frailty wasn't to be mistaken for passiveness; in his youth, he'd been just as renowned a warrior as Oomu. However, a routine fishing trip in the north of Lendheria led to disaster when the fish he'd snagged managed to resist his reel so well that he was dragged into the water and suffered a broken knee and concussion; when he returned, he had no choice but to give up his physical lifestyle, and turned instead to scholarly pursuits. The incident, for all its severity, became something to laugh at in the pub after just a week or two, and good old Stillon became known as Sturgeon. These days, he could often be found screaming at his brother to stop making so much noise (they lived in a two-storey house; Orca on the bottom floor and Sturgeon on the top), screaming at local mischievous kids to stop making so much noise (they often crossed the trail outside the Faín household chattering at the top of their lungs for this very reason), or sometimes screaming at pigs or passing ships to stop making so much noise (this was not a very fruitful effort).

"He must be fun at parties," Rory smiled, as they walked. The trail Aryll took them down – a straight dirt track lined with grass, hedges, tall trees and wooden houses on both sides – went mostly perpendicular to the beach, which meant they got to see the sheer extent of it. Being used to the two or three cruddy options generally available in England – some stony, some sandy, and all strewn with dog litter, empty bottles and beached jellyfish – the concept of a single stretch of beautiful, unpolluted seaside was odd to witness for those who hadn't been on package holidays to Mediterranean resorts.

"It is like Spain," Sam said, catching up with the group after having ensured his hair was okay in the reflection of a pig's water trough. "The weather, is..." he searched for the word. "Good."

"It's fucking unbelievable," Ethan replied, half to himself, wiping his brow. "I'm going to burn."

"Where do you live, exactly?" Myra asked, being at the front of the pack with Aryll. The younger girl turned her head as they walked, and pointed over – down to where the trail they were on curved around a cliff, and then carried on up a small hill.

"That's a long way to go," Jamie doubtfully noted, sand still adorning his face in areas where he hadn't managed to fully brush it off.

"You'll manage," Mae said dismissively, though red-cheeked herself.

"I woke up face-down in the sand," Jamie deadpanned. "My lungs have probably deflated by now. Like a balloon."

"Man up!" said Russell, giving Jamie a little push. "Be grateful we don't have to go up _there_."

He pointed up at the top of the cliff whose base they were heading towards. It seemed to stretch up for miles; the distant plateau atop the great stone wall was home to a dense forest, not unlike the one they'd last been in before The Happening.

Arran's gaze lingered on the forest for a while as they moved onwards. It was still... uncomfortable, to think about.

* * *

Eglan Garth

13:26

Day 1: Anorsday, 16th of Nórui (10E 201)

Pure white eyes seemed to light up the shrouded chamber that overlooked the darkest corner of the Great Sea. Here, there were no children; there were no beaches, no sad old forests of mystery. The walls of the fortress were as dark as the souls of those who now walked its halls; but where these cruel figures were shallow cocoons of what was once a Goddess-blessed race, the walls were a foot or two of solid stone brick, laid in an age gone by for a purpose no longer known. And to be frank, its original purpose was no longer cared about by anyone who called it home. What it served to do now was all that mattered... and that was the cornerstone of the plan.

Flecked with remnants of the tawny colour they once held, the eyes glared downwards at the table in the centre of the room with a sense of frustrated purpose, as if they could see what was on it in the pitch blackness.

Perhaps they could.

A golden-brown hand, broad of size and firm of grip, slipped out of the lightly billowing sleeve it had been hidden in, and in a single swooping motion it held the objects of his attention up, closer to those unnaturally bright eyes.

Anger flared, and so did a torch. The eyes nearly blinked as the wall-mounted sconce to his left burst alight, but he otherwise showed no reaction. Of course he wouldn't; it wasn't like losing his temper was a rare occurrence.

A hypothetical outside observer who'd scaled the fort's walls, drawn back the thick red curtain that hung over both sides of the room's sole window-hole and peered inside the topmost chamber would have seen perhaps half a second of light in the room – a flash of red hair above the eyes, of an elegant kimono fluttering in the altitude's wind, of the glittering talismans he held in that iron grip – before the other hand rose up and snuffed the flame with naught but a twitch of movement, as quickly as it had started up. He needed no fire to see – not when he had the power he did at his disposal, anyway. And besides, even without such a force on his side, it was plain as the day he'd blocked off from the room that he was getting nowhere.

No, it wasn't working. Not much of a surprise; carefully planned out though his plots were, they had a tendency of never coming to fruition, usually due to some fatal oversight he'd missed.

But he had things to do. He was once a King, and however much of one he remained to be, holed up in this empty fortress with literal _beasts_ for company, getting angry over _gemstones_, he wasn't about to let himself get too worked up about it. Back when he was a proper King, he had people to do that for him. And really, he still did. They were just... slightly differently managed. He took three slow, deliberate strides across the room, to the window-hole. Wrenching the curtain open on both sides, he let his head emerge but an inch out of the room, and took a breath before letting out a distinctly inhuman noise. It was like a birdcall – a deep, gravelly, squawking hoot that echoed into the chilly afternoon air like a war-cry. It was the kind of call that doesn't need to say "I am the strongest", because every bird is already well aware of this. It was more of an assertion; a ceremonial declaration of the strongest one's presence.

And as usual, it received just the response he wanted.

* * *

Lendheria

13:32

Day 1

The art of Lendherian hygiene was pleasantly different to the uninspired old "shower and brush your teeth" routines employed back in Earth. While this in itself conjured up painful thoughts of how far removed they were from the cosy confines of home in every sense of the word, some of the displaced children found themselves delighting in the sheer quirkiness of it all. After all, if they were going to be here for a while yet, why spend time stuck in the old rut of homesickness and existential confusion when you can instead lather yourself in a fragrant sap extracted through singing to trees?

"I'm sorry, but that is definitely bullshit," said Joe, ever the broad-thinking. Clad in a simple brown undergarment, he folded his arms in defiance, seemingly of the whole situation. "Singing to bloody trees? Is this bloody Narnia?"

"Might as well be," Arran reasoned, scrubbing the frothy sap into his voluminous shock of hair with considerable force. "Considering how we got here..."

"Isn't this a bit gay?" Charlie seemed to be asking for confirmation. Russell, face screwed up in contact with a stream of hot spring water, shook his head.

"Not like we're naked," he said, indicating towards their convenient 'washgarb' – an inoffensive cotton wrap around the nether regions that served to protect Lendherians' dignity when engaging in such a group shower. As they utilised the expedient hot springs that lay a little inside of the island's cliffsides, there wasn't really a way to allow solo showers; but still, apparently sharing common virtues regarding indecent exposure with England, they didn't want to have to parade around getting hot and steamy while also completely naked. In another display of respect for the island's newest visitors, the girls were also shown to another of the spring systems to have their own group shower, away from the lecherous eyes of certain males in the party.

"I'll admit, I felt quite uncomfortable earlier," Ethan was saying to Ed and Jamie, who were inspecting an elaborate pattern on the wall of the semi-cavernous chamber. "Why did that old woman have to watch us get changed?"

"'That old woman' was Aryll's grandma," Jamie reminded the boy, "and what, was she going to head back to her house after showing us the way around the bloody island? I'm pretty sure she's having a shower of her own."

"And why do they have to be in groups?" Ethan continued his rant. "I do _not_ feel safe with people like Luke at arm's length in a little bloody loincloth. And this is so _cramped_..." Ed took a meaningfully quizzical look at the good yard's distance between them and any of the other boys. Ethan waved a hand dismissively: "You know what I mean! Too many people in one room, and not enough clothes between them. Any depraved little deviant could do anything he wanted, I don't feel safe..."

"I think you're getting a _liiittle_ bit agitated," Jamie replied with a condescending grin, only to be met with an impressively loud forehead slap that boomed across the resonant chamber. He flinched from the sudden hit, and his hands were jolted from his face, where they had been lathering his cheeks, up to his eyes.

"Oi!" he snapped, half-jokingly. "Not when there's shit on my face!"

As Jamie struggled to clear his vision of the mildly burning cleaning-juice (and Ethan tittered away at his efforts), Ed Hopkins, lost in some strange train of thought, started to trail away from the others – and then, without even taking much notice, away from the vaguely rectangular floorspace dedicated to spring showers. He didn't notice as his bare feet connected with a considerably colder ground; he didn't take in the sudden lack of soothing, hot water above his head; and he neglected to observe that the voices of all his male friends were slowly being drowned out by the ever-present, looming sound of nothing that one finds when there is no wind, and no low-key electrical hums.

It was this that finally made Ed look around, a little startled; of course, the only places he'd generally been in where blowing wind couldn't be heard were always with light fittings, computers or other assorted appliances, that would all gather in the still air to make a rather relaxing little murmur in the background.

And there was no orderly _tuck tuck tuck_ of a clock keeping English time, and no occasional _vssshhhh_ of a car zooming past; lost in opaque, relentlessly obscure thoughts that refused to make themselves cognitively visible, it was the sudden realisation that there was no more of those "old world" sounds that made him look around, after God-knows-how-many minutes, as if to remind himself of where he was.

Taking in the dimly lit walls, the sprawling, dusty pattern of swirls and angles that adorned them, and the abyssal stretch of natural walkway that lay before him, he realised that he didn't even know.

* * *

Lendheria

13:39

Day 1

"You know what this reminds me of?"

The continuous pitter-patter of purifying spring water cascading upon this other, separate spring-showering chamber was the girl's only response.

"This reminds me of swimming lessons in Year 6."

Speaking with a kind of careful resolution – determined to make conversation as lightly and casually as possible – Myra Teague stood, naked as the day she was born, arms resting behind her head as she nonchalantly stretched.

No one spoke.

"Um..." Myra shot a brief, fervent glance in the direction of Louise Kennedy, who was leaning against the rocky wall, looking down at the floor with her arms held rather protectively across her upper body as if the provided cotton garments weren't enough. "Does—does anyone remember them? Swimming lessons? Year 6?"

She felt like the water falling on her head was mocking her.

"No? Okay," Myra beamed over at her friends, all stood in various states of silent discomfort. Alissa had both arms folded across her voluminous chest, and seemed intensely interested all the mysteries and wonders her left foot had to show her. Ellie, looking as if she was trying her hardest to make the best out of a bad situation, made tiny washing movements with a handful of cleaning sap; she was going to come out with an absolutely spotless forearm, but even she seemed preoccupied with making as little of her presence known as possible.

Myra could have screamed.

"Okay," she said instead, nodding with a painful grin. "Okay."

There was a pause, then a sliding noise, like a sack of flour being dragged across a wet floor. Eager for some more human contact, Myra whirled around to see the source of the sound... and immediately wanted to whirl back around and continue being awkwardly cheerful.

Alaina Thallon's aged (and very naked) backside had thumped ungracefully to the ground. Her stumpy arms strained as she forced herself up, laughing with a breeziness that for some reason escaped the other girls. "Look at me!" she said with a little chuckle. "I believe I slipped on some sap residue."

The god-forsaken noise of the water perpetuated, filling in the blanks where the girls failed to respond. Faces went red. Eyes hastily averted themselves. Alaina laughed again.

"Well," she said, heaving herself back to her little old feet, "I have had a _lovely_ shower. It's been wonderful meeting all of you!"

Ellie smiled an awkward smile.

"Anyway," Alaina continued, dusting herself off as if the torrent of springwater hadn't already made her immaculately clean. "I suppose I'd best be off, now. I shouldn't leave my Aryll alone for too long!"

Light _plsh_es on the edge of the shower grounds signalled her surprisingly dignified exit. Croaky (but melodic) hums slowly faltered in volume as she wandered off down the snaking corridor that led to the Belongings Chamber, where clothes were washed in preparation for the showergoers to get ready to face the outside world again. And finally, there was an easier kind of silence.

Ten breaths were let out in an instant, and ten heads turned to each other in search of shared feelings.

"That was fun," Louise Kennedy shook her head in quiet disbelief, arms unfolded and chestwrap loosened. "Didn't think she was ever going to leave."

"Suppose we can't really feel too annoyed about it," Caitlyn Greene reasoned, finally getting on to washing her mousy brown hair. "It's their culture, isn't it?"

"We're tourists, they should respect our culture too!" Charlotte Price joked. In the wake of finally being left alone again, with no Grandmas to keep them from talking, the air of the chamber was full of chatter and laughing. Amidst all the newfound light-hearted chit-chat, and the ever-present sound of the spring shower impacting with stone and skin, no one quite managed to hear the entry of a newcomer.

Until Annie backed up into him accidentally.

"Oh, Jesus!" she shrieked, holding a hand up to her chest first to calm her heart, then with another hand to protect her womanhood. "What are you doing?!"

Ed Hopkins' face was almost as red as Alissa's.

"Sorry," he mumbled, in a strangled voice. "I think I've gone the wrong way."

Myra laughed – half nervously, half legitimately at the fact that Ed had gotten lost – and waved her hand dismissively. "That's okay. Wouldn't think _you_ would be trying to perv on us." Lita nodded with a twisted smile.

"Yeah," the shorter girl said, "If it was Luke I'd be worried!"

Ed, still standing there, smiled back awkwardly, then seemed to come to his senses and turn away, pointing at a barely noticeable, six-foot-high opening in the wall. "Um, I think I came from here."

"Is there one passage that goes between chambers, then?" Kyra asked. Not seeming to care that Ed was present, she did nothing to protect her dignity, and scrubbed her back with a washcloth as she spoke. "That's a bit dodgy."

_Oh yes,_ Alissa thought. _You're flaunting yourself in front of a boy you've probably never talked to, and the fact that two __**caves**__ are connected is dodgy._

"Looks like it," Ed nodded, still turned away. "I dunno if people normally go down it, though. It's pretty dark..."

Having finished showering, Mae Starrett padded out of the washing grounds and stood with Ed, looking down the passageway that connected the two separate rooms. It was dark; darker than the rest of the dimly lit cavern network, with no torches and no little holes in the wall to act as windows. She bit her lip.

"Yeah, that looks a bit dodgy, actually," she said. "As in, you-might-get-lost-and-we'll-never-see-you-again dodgy. I'd just go out the way we all came in if I were you."

Ed nodded. "Sounds like a plan."

As he ambled down to the considerably less sinister walkway that led straight to the Belongings Chamber, where Aryll's grandma had gone just a few minutes earlier, Lita elbowed Annie.

"Hope you didn't get too excited," she teased. Annie shook her head and smiled.

* * *

Lendheria

13:48

Day 1

Ten minutes later, everyone returned to the Belongings Chamber to pick up their freshly washed clothes. Thankfully, it seemed that their host had some sense of privacy, and so left the teenagers to their own devices as they got re-dressed. However, it was still of course rather awkward.

"Nice cotton-wrap-thing," Ryan grinned, indicating towards Lita's new undergarments which were essentially tie-dyed purple and orange. She laughed him off, but others were not so lucky.

"Hey, Charlotte," Luke said, running a hand through his hair as he often did as he looked down at Charlotte's red articles. "I like the colours! They complement your physique!"

Charlotte Price was frozen in place. A weak smile slowly formed; she could see Jamie and Joe laughing their heads off at Luke behind him, and so most of the edge of the unexpected advance was dulled. "Thanks," she offered. Luke smiled and nodded acknowledgement, before wandering over to the boy's belongings chest to retrieve his dress shirt.

"D'you enjoy that?" Rory asked Charlotte good-heartedly. She laughed a sarcastic laugh back at him.

Over at the girls' container, Alissa, Myra, Annie and Ellie were stood huddled around it, searching hurriedly for their clothes.

"Why didn't we just take the washgarbs?" Annie asked in despair, rummaging for her skinny jeans.

"I suppose it's a feminist statement?" was all Alissa could come up with. "'Take that, patriarchy, we don't _need_ your indecent exposure laws!'?"

"That would be great if this place _had_ indecent exposure laws," Ellie said. "They just let us waltz right in, stark naked."

"I don't know why you're all so up in arms about it," Kyra shrugged, kneeling on the ground, nonchalantly searching for her clothes.

"Well, we've all known the boys for like 5 years now," Myra reminded the girl. "Some of them even about 12 years. You just came in this year, it's different for you." _You're an undignified slut who would probably sleep with any of them anyway_, she did not add.

Back with the boys, they had come to a rather unsettling dilemma.

"What's the problem?" Rory asked, slipping on his blue polo shirt.

"Only some of our stuff is here," Russell explained, pointing towards a massive pile of clothes that had been unceremoniously dumped out of the trunk, and onto the floor. "We've been through it all."

"My hoodie's not here," Jamie added. "Neither are my socks."

"You sure?" Rory said. "Maybe they're still washing that stuff."

After a good twenty minutes of uncertainty, confusion and (most importantly) standing around half-dressed, the group discovered that some unscrupulous group of like-aged islanders had made off with some of this swanky foreign clothing upon finishing their showers. The host, a lanky man with rings under his eyes named Aber, apologised profusely for the inconvenience, and offered the group the Lendherian clothing left behind by the hoodlum thieves.

Thankfully, there was enough to make up for all the lost goods, and in a wide enough range of sizes to fit everyone, too.

"Not sure I'm happy with this," Jamie said, pulling the sleeves of his new crimson, woollen sweater up to his elbows. "Where do they get wool from, anyway? Haven't seen sheep on the island."

Aber, who was about to leave, turned to explain.

"Yes, there aren't any sheep here," he confirmed, tastefully averting his eyes from the few of them who were still getting dressed. "They live in the central region of the sea where it's a little colder; we get wool imports from the islands around there."

He left them with a new, interesting thought. What other islands were out there?

"How big is this sea, then?" Hashim asked, flexing his hands in a new pair of odd glove-like garments that resembled armwarmers. "And where's the closest continent?"

"Oh, hang on," said Joe, "let me get out my Big Book of Magic Bloody Sea Atlases..."

* * *

Caragobel

14:02

Day 1

The great being, blessed with wings like stormclouds and eyes like lighthouses, careened forwards, zeroing in on its new objective. Or rather, its old objective; just newly updated to focus on one specific person. Of course, as luck would have it, said person happened to be somewhere down at the southern end of the ocean. It was warm down there; all tropical and exotic, with 9 months of beautiful sunshine and no freezing winds that buffeted the bird's midnight feathers and rendered a bitter chill over its face and its talons. The helmet tended to shrink against its sensitive head when it nested up in the bleak fortress of the north; it pressed against the creature, and caused it no end of discomfort. But why protest, when the man who housed it gave it such promise? He cooed to it in the night sometimes, when he was feeling pangs for the old land. It could sense his despair; it liked to wrap its fearsome wings around him as he pondered what might have been, and keep the two of them warm in the night.

And in return, all it would have to do is find whatever young maiden took the King's fancy at the time. It wasn't sure what qualities he looked for – or even how he discerned their locations – but he was on an intense search for something or other. Some girl, some... thing. It didn't tend to give it much thought. It was just like hunting in the old days, before the King made himself known. Back when it ruled the roost, in the Peaks...

It had been given a boost in speed. Some divine wind – no, some _earthly_ wind, born of whatever powers had been given to the King _before_ he became the Superior – had been charged up out of the ether, and blasted into its rear plumage, making the brilliant display of tail feathers billow out like fireworks in the afternoon sky, and making whichever puny seagulls dared to fly near it think again. Just as the King was most definitely the leader of the Pigs, then so was the bird the lord of all birds. It served no one – no one but the King, of course – and it would come down like a tonne of stone bricks on whichever pathetic being thought to go against this system.

It had been flying for a good few minutes, now. The push of this wind meant it would get down to the south end in an incredibly short time; where boats would take months for a cross-ocean journey, its great self would only take a matter of days. Beating its magnificent wings in the freezing daylight over Caragobel, it looked down at the little town that had formed recently around the rock spires of the island. Fishermen were preparing to head out into the sea for another day's haul; farmers cared for their crops and their livestock around the base of the famed spires; children frolicked in the minty-green grass and the seaside sand, relishing in the cold that brought out the most beautiful features of the sea.

The bird had no time for any of these people. Except the children.

It would stop on the way back to see if any of them were worth bringing back to the King.

* * *

_Sorry about the wait._

_School and stuff have been getting in the way a lot recently. And when I've had the chance to sit and work on this, I've just been so overwhelmed with all the documents and stuff I've planned for it that I forget where the characters were and what was happening. But here's another part of the story done. I know I've been promising that we get to real story very soon, but it's starting to write itself, and the chapters are expanding rapidly past what I'd had planned. But I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that __**next chapter**__ will see the proper thickening of the plot!_


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